16.05.2018
The painting “Reclining Nude” (Nu couche (sur le cote gauche), 1917) by the Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) on Monday sold for a record $ 157.2 million at the Sotheby’s auction in New York.
The estimated value of the lot was $ 150 million, which was also the highest estimation among all works of art ever exhibited at this auction. The painting, reaching a diagonal of 147 cm, is part of a series of 22 canvases that can be seen in the world’s largest museums, including the Metropolitan Museum and the Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York, the British Institute of Art of Courtois and the Long Museum in Shanghai.
The realized picture was bought by an Irish billionaire at an auction in 2003 for $ 26.9 million. In 2015, another canvas with a reclining nude woman from the same series was sold for $ 170.4 million.
Other notable lots realized during the auction in New York were the canvas of the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) “Rest” (Le Repos, 1932), sold for $ 36.9 million at an estimated value of $ 25-35 million, and a picture of the French the painter Claude Monet (1840-1926) “Morning in the Seine” (Matinee sur la Seine, 1896), which went under the hammer for $ 20.6 million (with estimated $ 18-25 million).