A portray by Rene Magritte shattered an public sale report for the surrealist artist on Tuesday, promoting for greater than $121 million (R2.2 billion) at Christie’s in New York.
The seminal 1954 portray had been valued at $95 million, and the earlier report for a piece by Rene Magritte (1898-1967) was $79 million, set in 2022.
After an almost 10-minute bidding struggle on Tuesday, “Empire of Mild” (“L’Empire des lumieres”) was bought for $121 160, 000, “attaining a world-record worth for the artist and for a surrealist murals at public sale”, in response to public sale home Christie’s.
The portray – depicting a home at night time, illuminated by a lamp publish, whereas below a brilliant, blue sky – is considered one of a sequence by the Belgian artist exhibiting the interaction of shadow and light-weight.
Autumn gross sales season
“Empire of Mild” was a part of the non-public assortment of Mica Ertegun, an inside designer who fled communist Romania to settle in america the place she grew to become an influential determine within the arts world.
She died in late 2023 and was married to the late Ahmet Ertegun, the music magnate who based the Atlantic Information label.
The sale of the Magritte portray was an anticipated spotlight of this week’s autumn gross sales season in New York, at a time when the artwork market has seen a slowdown since final yr.
Christie’s – which is managed by Artemis, the funding holding firm owned by the Pinault household – mentioned gross sales totaled $2.1 billion within the first half of this yr.
That’s down for the second straight yr, after a peak of $4.1 billion in 2022 because the world emerged from the coronavirus pandemic.
Throughout the identical Christie’s public sale on Tuesday, a celebrated 1964 portray of a fuel station by 86-year-old Ed Ruscha, titled “Customary Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half,” bought for $68.26 million, setting a brand new public sale report for the American pop artist.
What’s probably the most you’ve ever spent on a portray?
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By Garrin Lambley © Agence France-Presse
