a box of Gustav Klimt from 1902, Island im Attersee (Island in Attersee) sold for $53.2 million on Tuesday after a seven-minute bid between three buyers in the first big sale of the season at Sotheby’s in New York.
The painting is one of the few landscapes painted by the Austrian artist, who tried to capture the nuances of the sun in the water and the multicolored reflections it creates, with a mastery of green, in a technique reminiscent of pointillism.
Klimt “beat” the one who started as a favorite on the night at Sotheby’s, the painting L´empire des lumières (The Empire of Lights, 1951), one of the most evocative works of the Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte and that it was sold for 42.3 million, when the output fork put it up to 55 million.
Among the works that exceeded 20 million this afternoon, a rubens (Portrait of a man like Mars, sold for 26.2 million); a Picasso (Nude and recumbent woman playing with a catfor 21.2 million), a Van Gogh (Garden in front of Mas Debrayfor 23.2 million), as well as the sculpture Femme Leoni of Alberto Giacomettisold for 28.48 million.
All these works, with the exception of that of Klimtthey remained below their respective maximum forks with which Sotheby’s had presented them in this its great spring auction, which possibly leads to analysis tomorrow about a supposed fatigue in the art market.
Tomorrow one of the jewels of the Sotheby’s spring collection is planned, but it is not an artistic object, but an ancient book: it is the Hebrew Bible known as Sassoon Codex, written around the year 900 and one of the most complete and best preserved of the Bibles written in Hebrew. Its starting range is between 30 and 50 million dollars.
Source: EFE
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