Posted on 11/21/2025 1:58:19 PM PST by simpson96
The final tally of $236.4 million is the highest price for any work of modern art ever sold at auction and also set an auction record for the artist. Until Tuesday evening, that record had been held by Pablo Picasso’s 1955 Les Femmes d’Alger (“Version O”), which sold at Christie’s New York in 2015 for $179.4 million. The Klimt record also marks the most expensive artwork ever sold by Sotheby’s.
“Tonight, we made history at the Breuer,” Helena Newman, Sotheby’s worldwide chairman of Impressionist and modern Art and chairman of its European operations, said in a statement shortly after the lot sold. “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. Klimt is one of those rare artists whose magic is as powerful as it is universal.”
The full-length portrait, one of only two such named Klimt commissions left in private hands, led the highly anticipated sale of the Leonard A. Lauder Collection, a 55-work trove valued at more than $400 million. Lauder acquired the painting in the mid-1980s from dealer Serge Sabarsky, adding to a collection that also included Cubist masterpieces, which he would later donate to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Proceeds from the sale will go to the Lauder trust.
Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer is widely considered one of Klimt’s most intricately conceived late portraits, begun when the artist was at the height of his powers and completed after nearly three years of revisions. Commissioned by the family that served as Klimt’s most important patrons, the work survived confiscation during the Nazi era and was restituted in 1948 before entering Lauder’s collection. Few Klimts ever surface publicly; fewer still carry the weight of this portrait.
She sickens me
Yet I can’t look away
I love his work also.
AI Denoise + AI Upscale. Back to School (1986).Back to School (1986). Your wife was showing us her Klimt. | 0:50
godofwarhdcollection | 39.9K subscribers | 9,937 views | August 21, 2021
I’m sure your “Live laugh love” signs in your home are great for you.
"I want a schnauzer with my weinerschnitzel."
"If everybody had a twelve-gauge..."
Your Skeetin’ Heart ❤️
Will Tell On You
Thread hijack successful, return to Top Secret base. One more:
Are you lonesome tonight, is your kitchen a sight
Is your wardrobe all rundown and bare
Is your lipstick all smeared, are your stockings not sheer
Do they make your legs show all your hair
Do the tears on your pillow roll down as you turn
Do they short out the blanket and make the sheets burn
Is your heart filled with pain, will you come back again
Shop at Macy’s and love me tonight
(Great work, Mr. Kilmer. We are ALL your huckleberry. Rest easy now.)
🙋👁💯😀
LOL.
Im an amateur artist so I copied his painting called mother with child, framed it and hung it on the wall right next to a Picasso I copied. 😉
😄😉
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