A work by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) from the famous collection of Emily Fisher Landau, who died in March, was sold at an auction in New York for almost 140 million dollars (around 130 million euros). This makes it the second most expensive work by Picasso ever sold at auction, the auction house Sotheby’s, which had previously valued the painting at around $120 million, said on Wednesday. In 2015, “Les femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’)” by Picasso was auctioned at Christie’s in New York for $179 million.
The 1932 Picasso painting “Femme à la montre”, a portrait of his lover Marie-Thérèse Walter, which is now being auctioned, was bought by the collector Landau in 1968 and then hung above the fireplace in her New York apartment for many years, Sotheby’s said . Who bought it was not initially announced. Together with the Picasso, around 120 other works will be auctioned at the two-day auction – before the traditional autumn auction next week.
At the end of the 1960s, Landau received a large insurance sum after jewelry was stolen and began buying art. Over the years she built up one of the world’s most important collections of modern art, with works by, among others, Georgia O’Keeffe, Agnes Martin, Keith Haring, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly and Robert Mapplethorpe. For a time, Landau also ran a museum in the New York borough of Queens. She died in March at the age of 102.
