the most expensive work of modern art auctioned

A painting by the Austrian painter Gustav Klimt‘Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer’, It was sold this Tuesday for 236 million dollars at an auction at Sotheby’s in New York and became the most expensive work of modern art, in addition to setting a record for the author and the institution.

This Klimt, which was the most notable piece in the sale of cosmetics magnate Leonard Lauder, started at around $130 million and was the subject of a bidding battle between six interested parties that lasted 20 minutes until the hammer blow declared a winner, whose identity has not been released.

‘Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer’ (1914-16), stood out for its large size, its high esteem and its history, since was confiscated by the Nazis before being recovered by the protagonist’s family, who were Klimt’s clients, and finally acquired by the businesswoman’s son Estée Lauder in the 1980s.

Elisabeth Lederer, daughter of industrialist August Lederer and his wife Serena, was so close to Klimt that I called him ‘uncle’and after the Nazi annexation of Austria, the young He even said that the painter was his biological father to convince the authorities that he did not have Jewish blood, the institution said.

The work has been one of the attractions of the new headquarters of Sotheby’s, a well-known brutalist building designed by Marcel Breuer that opened this month, and where thousands of people have waited hours in the street to see the pieces up for auction, particularly this and two other Klimt paintings that belonged to the magnate Lauder.

In second place, ‘Blumenwiese (Blooming Meadow)’ was sold for $86 million and in third place, for $68 million, ‘Waldabhang bei Unterach am Attersee (Forest Slope in Unterach on the Attersee)’, two landscapes by Klimt in green tones that had never been auctioned before.

In total, Sotheby’s auctioned 24 pieces from Lauder’s collection by renowned artists, including Edvard Munch, Henri Matisse and Vincent van Gogh, and achieved a final collection of 527 million dollars, of which the largest part, 392 million, corresponded to the three Klimt paintings and two drawings.