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One June 21, 2016, Pablo Picasso's "Femme Assise," one of the artist's earliest Cubist paintings, sold for £43.2 million ($63.4 million) at a Sotheby's London auction, becoming the most expensive Cubist painting ever sold at auction.
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The sale of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" to billionaire Leon Black for $119.9 million in 2012 marked more than a new art record: it was the first time that a pastel, rather than an oil or acrylic painting, came anywhere near achieving such a price. This was in part due to the overwhelming popularity and international fame of the image, and the fact that it is the only version of Munch's signature work that is not owned by a museum.
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Rock star Eric Clapton sold his "Abstraktse Bild" by art star Gerhard Richter in 2012 for £21.3 million, establishing a new record for a living artist and the highest price ever paid for a Gerhard Richter painting. One of the most popular artists at the moment, the octogenarian has seen his work increase in value by over 600 percent in the past ten years, according to art market analysts. His oeuvre is celebrated as much for its range and versatility as for its virtuosity: his paintings tend to focus equally on the intellectual and the aesthetic. This is a particularly strong work, but the provenance -- coming from Clapton's private collection -- made the painting particularly attractive.
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Vincent van Gogh's "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" rocked the art world in 1990 when it sold to Tokyo's Kobayashi gallery for $82.5 million at Christie's-- more than twice the previous auction record. A portrait of Van Gogh's doctor, Paul-Ferdinand Gachet, of whom the artist was particularly fond, the painting had belonged previously to financier and philanthropist Siegfried Kramarsky, on long-term loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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Pablo Picasso's "Garçon a la Pipe" broke the $100 million ceiling when it sold at Sotheby's for over $104 million in May, 2004 -- the first painting to exceed the record set in 1990 for the "Dr.Gachet." (Interestingly, both "Dr. Gachet "and the "Garçon" achieved their record prices exactly 100 years after having been created by their artists.) Sotheby's Senior Vice President David Norman called the iconic painting "the finest work in public hands that was for sale."
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Christie's billed pop artist Roy Lichtenstein's nurse as the "quintessential Lichtenstein heroine," a "femme fatale," and called the painting itself a "dazzling masterpiece." Collectors must have been convinced, bidding the work up to a record price for the artist at $95,365,000 in November 2015.
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Setting a world record for an artwork sold at auction when it was purchased by the Qatari royal family in 2015, Les femmes d'Alger is in many ways the quintessential collectible Picasso: bold colors, fragmented planes, nude women, and art historical references (in this case, to Delacroix and Matisse). The work had previously sold for $31.9 million in Christie's 1997 auction of the collection of Victor and Sally Ganz -- a sale that many say ignited the current art boom.
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The portrait of the ample-bodied Sue Tilley, a British government worker, was one of four such paintings the British artist produced of the woman he called "Fat Sue." Described by Christie's in its catalogue as "one of the most remarkable paintings of the human figure ever produced." The portrait -- for which Ms. Tilly reportedly earned £20 per day as a model -- achieved a record for the artist when it sold at Christie's New York in May, 2015.
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Appetite for Modigliani's work had already been on the rise when this rare nude came up for sale. The work's extraordinary provenance, literature and exhibition history added to its desirability, helping it set a new record for the artist -- and one of the highest prices ever set at auction -- when it sold at Christie's in November, 2015 to a Chinese billionaire bidding by telephone.
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Long one of America's favorite home-grown artists, Georgia O'Keeffe is celebrated mostly for her magnificent flower paintings -- like this Jimson Weed , which shattered all records for the highest price ever paid for a work by a woman artist -- nearly quadrupling the previous record of $11.9 million set by Joan Mitchell just a few months prior. What's more, the work was also purchased by a woman: Walmart heiress Alice Walton, who bought it on behalf of the Crystal Bridges Museum (of which she is the founder).

Story highlights

Sotheby's London has sold Picasso's Femme Assise (1909)

The painting is one of Picasso's earliest Cubist works

CNN  — 

Picasso’s Cubist works line the white walls of every major international art museum, from the Museum of Modern Art in New York to the Tate Modern in London.

Now, one of his most seminal works has smashed an auction record.

Femme Assise (1909), one of the artist’s earliest Cubist paintings, has sold for £43.2 million ($63.4 million) at a Sotheby’s London auction on June 21, 2016, almost $20 million more than the original estimate.

Described by Sotheby’s as “the greatest Cubist painting to come to the market in decades,” it has broken the record for the highest price for a Cubist work at any auction.

Experts say it depicts Picasso’s lover and frequent model Fernande Olivier.

“It is extremely rare,” said Helena Newman, Sotheby’s global co-head of Impressionist and Modern Art department, ahead of the auction.

“The vast, vast, vast majority of the works of the Cubist period of this importance went into museums of the world many years ago because Picasso’s Cubism has for many decades been considered one of the most important, groundbreaking periods – not just for him, but for the whole of what was to come in terms of modern art.”

A seminal work

The world's most expensive art goes to auction: Why records keep being broken

Cubism, which sees subjects broken down into geometric shapes and reassembled in an abstract way, is considered one of the most revolutionary movements in contemporary art.

Taking root in the early 20th century, it is considered a precursor for contemporary abstract art.

The painting’s former owner, whose identity has not been disclosed, first bought Femme Assise at a 1973 Sotheby’s auction for £340,000 ($486,000).

Read: Rare $31.6 million ‘Unique Pink’ diamond sets new auction record

Although this is not as high as the price of Picasso’s record-setting Femmes d’Alger, which sold for $149 million in 2015, it has not only claimed the title for highest price for any Cubist work at auction, but also the highest price for a painting sold in London since 2010, when Alberto Giacometti’s Walking Man I sold for £65 million ($95 million.)

“There hasn’t been a painting of this importance at auction in potentially a generation,” Newman says.

“I think what people are excited about is that sense of being upfront with Picasso at the very moment of his creative process. It’s that sense of the potential of being able to have a piece of that moment of what defines Picasso.”