La Gommeuse – Pablo Picasso
Picasso’s La Gommeuse, a Blue Period work, sold for $67.45 million at Sotheby’s in New York last night. It was the top lot at the Impressionist and Modern Art evening sale which brought in a total of $306,712,000 and a new auction record for a Blue Period Picasso. The American billionaire Bill Koch bought it for just $3 million in 1984.
Van Gogh’s Paysage sous un ciel mouvements sold for $54 million and Mystic Suprematism by Kazimir Malevich made $37.8 million. The sales total across three sales of art at Sotheby’s in New York this week is $725,000,000. The evening and day sales of the Taubman collection came to $420 million. A total of seventeen paintings sold for more than $10 million.
Simon Shaw, Co-Head of Sotheby’s Worldwide Impressionist & Modern Art Department, commented: “Tonight’s sale spoke to the desires of the market today – our top lots alone tell the story of how diverse that market is, with strong results spanning classic Impressionism, Post Impressionism, Suprematism and Expressionism”.
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for October 9, 2015).
