Modigliani nude fetches $157.2m at Sotheby's – setting auction house record, but still, slightly better than the Picasso that just sold for $115 Million.Nu couché (sur le côté gauche), a reclining nude by the modernist master Amadeo Modigliani, fetched $157.2m in New York on Monday night – the highest price in Sotheby’s history. But it failed to beat the $170m record set for the artist three years ago.
Sotheby’s auctioneer Helena Newman led a packed salesroom bidding that started at $125m but stalled at $139m, well short of the 2015 record of $170m (including fees) for another nude, Nu couché (Reclining Nude), at rival Christie’s.
The painting, one of the largest works Modigliani ever made and one of only five of his nudes ever to come up for auction, was hoped to be able to reassure the market that in an industry increasingly concerned with contemporary painters early 20th -entury masterpieces are again finding favor.
That was emphatically true for Modigliani, whose prices have for years lagged behind peers like Picasso and Monet.
After a successful $833m sale of items from David Rockefeller’s estate last week, Nu couché was widely predicted to be a singular star of the New York spring auction season.The man painted a lot of nudes. It's a tough job, but someone gets to do it. Well, at least the women are mostly recognizable, even if the color palate seems a little limited.
Painted in 1917, three years before Modigliani’s death at the age of 35, the picture caused a scandal when exhibited at Modigliani’s first and only solo show at Galerie Berthe Weill in Paris that year.
When a crowd formed outside the gallery to gawp at the works, the police demanded the immediate closure of the show.
Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Hockey Girls" up and ready for action.
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