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Picasso dazzles as portrait of lover fetches $103 million at NYC auction 2 minutes read
By Helen Cook
New York City, US, May 13 (EFE).- A Pablo Picasso portrait of his lover became the star of Christie’s 20th Century Art auction held Thursday in New York, where a nearly 20-minute battle between two bidders raised the sale price of the work to $103.4 million.
The bidding for “Femme Assise Près d’une Fenêtre (Marie-Thérèse),” a large, vibrantly colored portrait of Picasso’s muse and lover Marie-Thérèse Walter, came close to doubling the estimated price tag of $55 million estimated by experts at the auction house.
1 minute read
New York City, US, May 13 (EFE).- A vibrant, large-scale portrait that Pablo Picasso painted of his muse and lover Marie-Thérèse Walter fetched a huge $103.4 million on Thursday at a Christie’s auction in New York.
The bidding for “Femme Assise Près d’une Fenêtre (Marie-Thérèse)” started at $45 million and shortly after surpassed $55 million, the top estimate of the auction house experts, to stop at $90 million, to which fees and taxes were later added.
The astronomical price was reached after an almost 20-minute battle between two phone buyers.
The piece, measuring 146 x 114cm, is considered an exceptional work by Picasso, since the Spaniard normally painted Marie-Thérèse lying down, naked, with her eyes closed and appearing lost in her own thoughts, but in this she sits relaxed, but commanding and stately, on a black chair near a window.
EFEBy Helen Cook.
New York City, US
14 May 2021
Picasso s portrait of lover fetches $103 million at NYC auction
A photograph provided by Christie s showing the work Femme assise près d une fenêtre (Marie-Thérèse) by Pablo Picasso that sold for $103.4 million in New York, May 13, 2021. EFE / Christie s / EDITORIAL USE ONLY / ONLY AVAILABLE TO ILLUSTRATE THE ACCOMPANYING NEWS (MANDATORY CREDIT)
A photograph provided by Christie s showing the work Femme assise près d une fenêtre (Marie-Thérèse) by Pablo Picasso that sold for $103.4 million in New York, May 13, 2021. EFE / Christie s / EDITORIAL USE ONLY / ONLY AVAILABLE TO ILLUSTRATE THE ACCOMPANYING NEWS (MANDATORY CREDIT)
Femme assise près d une fenêtre (Marie-Thérèse) (1932). Courtesy of Christie s Images, Ltd.
The latest run of socially distanced mostly online evening sales reached its peak this evening when Picasso’s
Femme assise près d’une fenêtre (Marie-Thérèse) (1932) sold to a client on the phone with Christie’s specialist Vanessa Fusco for $103.4 million after a protracted bidding war with her colleague Max Carter.
Offered as part of the $481.1 million Christie’s 20th-century evening auction (the hammer total was $414.4 million), it was a shocking display of bravura in the sales room, as the $90 million hammer on the Picasso incinerated the presale estimate of $55 million. (Unless otherwise stated, final prices include auction-house fees; presale estimates do not.)