Picasso’s portrait of lover fetches $103 million at NYC auction
New York City, US, May 13 (EFE).- A vibrant, large-scale portrait that Pablo Picasso painted of his muse and lover Marie-Thérèse Walter fetched a huge $103.4 million on Thursday at a Christie’s auction in New York.
The bidding for “Femme Assise Près d’une Fenêtre (Marie-Thérèse)” started at $45 million and shortly after surpassed $55 million, the top estimate of the auction house experts, to stop at $90 million, to which fees and taxes were later added.
The astronomical price was reached after an almost 20-minute battle between two phone buyers.
The piece, measuring 146 x 114cm, is considered an exceptional work by Picasso, since the Spaniard normally painted Marie-Thérèse lying down, naked, with her eyes closed and appearing lost in her own thoughts, but in this she sits relaxed, but commanding and stately, on a black chair near a window.
In addition, it was painted in 1932, one of the artist’s most productive and coveted years. “Everyone wants one of his 1932 works,” said Vanessa Fusco of the 20th Century Art auction at Christie’s Thursday.
Specifically, it was produced in October 1932 at Picasso’s Château de Boisgeloup in Normandy, and is part of a series of portraits of Marie-Thérèse that were exhibited in “Picasso, 1932: Love, Fame, Tragedy,” which in 2017 and 2018 was displayed at the Tate Modern in London and at the Musée Picasso in Paris.
In the curvilinear cubism painting you can see a Marie-Thérèse, who met Picasso outside a gallery at 17 years of age when the painter was 45, dressed in red, green and lilac. EFE
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