From the Tate Modern in London to New York‘s MOMA, there’s hardly a museum of modern art in the world that doesn’t have a Pablo Picasso painting adorning its walls, but at Sotheby’s yesterday, a Cubist work by him smashed an auction record by selling for $63.7 million.
‘Femme Assise‘ (circa 1909), is described by the auction house as ‘the greatest Cubist painting to come to the market in decades’. The painting features Picasso’s lover and muse, Fernande Olivier, who often modeled for him.
Cubism is one of modern art’s most revolutionary movements, which began in the early 20th Century and was a forerunner of contemporary abstract art. It’s a painting technique in which the subject is broken into geometric shapes and then brought back together in an abstract form.
The price that this painting fetched is the highest for a Cubist work of art, but another work by Picasso, ‘Femmes d’Alger, was sold in 2015 for a record $179 million.