Gustav Klimt Masterpiece Smashes Auction Records with $236.4 Million Sale
Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer was offered as part of the Leonard A. Lauder collection at Sotheby's newly unveiled Breuer Building
The inaugural auction at the Breuer Building in New York proved historic, as Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer became the most valuable work ever sold in Sotheby’s history. The $236.4 million sale also doubled the previous auction record for the artist, and was settled after a 20-minute bidding war between no fewer than six collectors.
The sale, which occurred Tuesday evening, was part of the Leonard A Lauder collection. “To see Gustav Klimt’s exquisite portrait of Elisabeth Lederer set a new auction record for the artist is thrilling in itself; to see it become the most valuable work ever sold at Sotheby’s is nothing short of sensational,” says Helena Newman, Chairman of Impressionist and Modern Art Worldwide and Chairman of Sotheby’s Europe. “Klimt is one of those rare artists whose magic is as powerful as it is universal. Since we first announced the sale of the Lauder Collection, this masterpiece has garnered a huge outpouring of love and admiration from around the world, manifest here New York in the tens of thousands of people who came to the Breuer building to see it.”
The Lauder collection sale, which was announced in September and is expected to achieve over $400 million, also includes two never-before-offered landscape paintings of Attersee by Klimt, six sculptures by Henri Matisse, and additional works by Picasso, Agnes Martin, and others. “Leonard Lauder’s legacy as a patron and collector is deeply intertwined with the history of postwar American art,” Lisa Dennison, Sotheby’s Chairman Americas, previously said. “His steadfast support of the Whitney Museum of American Art is echoed in the emphasis on the great American artists of the 1960s in the collection. Led by Agnes Martin’s rare and sensational ‘The Garden’ from 1964, and featuring exceptional works by Kenneth Noland, Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, and Alexander Calder, Lauder’s collection showcases the triumph of American artists in this critical era of art history.”
The portrait was numbered as lot 8 out of 24 included in the evening sale, which also features the Now & Contemporary Art Evening Auction led in part by Maurizio Cattelan’s America.