Overview
- The 1914–16 Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer drew a 20-minute contest among six bidders at Sotheby’s New York, closing at $236.4 million with fees.
- The price is the highest ever for Modern art at auction and the second-highest painting sold at auction after Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi.
- Offered from the late Leonard A. Lauder’s collection, the portrait headlined a night that brought roughly $527 million, with two Klimt landscapes also selling, led by Blumenwiese at $86 million.
- Sotheby’s did not disclose the buyer; the full-length portrait is one of only two of its kind still in private hands and carries a wartime history that includes Nazi-era seizure and survival of the Immendorf fire that destroyed related works.
- A marquee side lot, Maurizio Cattelan’s 18-karat gold toilet America, sold for $12.1 million after a single bid tied to its gold value.