NEW YORK, May 18 — The 1932 Pablo Picasso painting Femme nue couchée sold for US$67.5 million yesterday at its auction debut at Sotheby’s in New York, the most recent large sale at auction for blue-chip art.
Auction house Sotheby’s had predicted the Picasso painting, a surrealistic depiction of his muse Marie-Thérèse Walter, to sell in excess of US$60 million. Yesterday’s price falls short of other portraits of Marie-Thérèse, one of which fetched US$103.4 million at Christie’s last year., shows Marie-Thérèse as a many-limbed sea creature with her head tilted back in profile.
Amy Cappellazzo, the former head of Sotheby’s global fine art division, purchased the painting at Sotheby’s Modern Evening Sale in New York. She left the auction house last year.