US$179m auction record for Picasso

New York

TO a medley of whoops, hollers and gasps, Pablo Picasso's 1955 painting Les Femmes d'Alger (Version O) sold for US$179.4 million including fees at Christie's Looking Forward to the Past sale of artworks spanning the 20th century. The price was the highest on record for a work of art sold at auction, the company said, and was well over its estimate of US$140 million.

Once the bidding reached US$120 million on Monday night, the Picasso was pursued by five clients on telephones, often in agonisingly slow, US$1 million increments, before finally being sold to a buyer represented by Brett Gorvy, Christie's international head of contemporary art. The previous all-time auction high, also at Christie's, had been the US$142.4 million paid by Elaine Wynn, co-founder of the Wynn casino empire, for Francis Bacon's Three Studies of Lucian Freud in November 2013.