Picasso Sells for Record $106.5M

Highest auction price ever paid for art
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted May 5, 2010 1:52 AM CDT
Picasso Sells for Record $106.5M
"Nude Green Leaves, and Bust," a 1932 painting by Pablo Picasso, was sold at auction by Christie's in New York yesterday to an unidentified telephone bidder for $106.5 million.   (AP Photo/Christie's, New York)

A Pablo Picasso portrait of his mistress sold for a record-breaking $106.5 million at a Christie's auction in New York yesterday. The winning bid, placed by an anonymous telephone bidder, is the highest price ever paid for a work of art at auction, beating the $104.5 million forked out for a Giacometti sculpture earlier this year, the New York Times reports.

Picasso painted Nude, Green Leaves, and Bust in a single day in 1932. It shows mistress and muse Marie-Therese Walter reclining and as a bust, with the painter's profile in the background. The work came from the collection of Los Angeles philanthrophists Frances and Sidney Brody. It had been in the Brody family home since the couple bought the painting in the '50s.
(More painting stories.)

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