Evening sales at Sotheby's and Christie’s auction houses in New York raised a total
of 512 million dollars, AFP reports. Among the highlights were works by Pablo
Picasso and Paul Cezanne, while records were set for Swiss artist Alberto
Giacometti, French sculptor Auguste Rodin and Spanish surrealist Joan Miro.
Monet’s “Le Pont du chemin de fer a Argenteuil,”
an 1873 painting of a railway bridge spanning the Seine near Paris and described by Christie’s as a “truly
exceptional picture,” sold for a record 41.4 million dollars.
“It is the quintessential early Monet. We will not see another one this good
for a long while, I don’t suppose, unless this one lures a few out,” declared
Christie's honorary chairman and the evening's auctioneer, Christopher Burge,
quoted by the same source.
Meanwhile, Munch’s “Girls on a bridge,” depicted by Sotheby’s as “one of
those iconic, impactful, colorful, modern masterworks,” sold for 30.8 million
dollars, reestablishing a record for the artist.
“Etude pour ‘La Femme en Bleu” by French cubist Fernard Leger went to an
anonymous buyer at Sotheby's for a record 39.2 million dollars. Simon Shaw, head
of impressionist and modern art at Sotheby’s, described Leger’s work as the “greatest
cubist painting seen at auction in decades.”
“We had fantastic results largely across the board, from the impressionist
pictures... into the modern works,” he added.
Other works by Monet as well as works by Picasso, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Renoir
and Matisse succeeded to find buyers. They wanted to remain anonymous.
