Picasso for US$140m? Christie's New York auction could smash art world records
Works by Picasso valued at US$140m and Giacometti at US$130m are up for bidding
Christie's auction house is hoping to set new world records with a Picasso valued at US$140 million and a Giacometti worth US$130 million, as New York's spring auction season kicks off tomorrow.
Pablo Picasso's colourful depicting a scene from a harem, will be up for grabs when Christie's puts it on the auction block May 11.
The same goes for Alberto Giacometti's bronze statue , of which there are only six casts in the world.
"Those two works can set a world record," said Loic Gouzer, senior vice-president of Christie's. "You don't have another chance to get them."
The rising price of artwork at auctions is attributed to a growing number of wealthy, private investors around the world, the experts say.
Giacometti's nearly 1.8-metre depiction of a wiry man holding up one hand and pointing with the other is the artist's "most celebrated sculpture", Gouzer said.
Picasso created the painting in 1955, inspired by 19th-century French painter Eugene Delacroix, but as homage to Henri Matisse, who died in 1954. The work is one of the last major paintings by the Spanish master in private collection. The world record for a painting sold at auction is US$142.4 million for Francis Bacon's , which was snapped up in New York in 2013. And the record for priciest sculpture is held by Giacometti, whose sold for US$104.3 million in London in 2010.
At a Sotheby's auction of contemporary art on May 12, works worth about US$320 million will be sold in 65 lots, to include works by Mark Rothko, Roy Lichtenstein and Gerhard Richter.
Michael Macaulay, a contemporary art specialist for Sotheby's, called the auction "one of our biggest sales ever."
