In major auction night, rare Klimt painting smashes records at US$236.4 million

Gustav Klimt’s 'Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer (Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer)' sold for US$236.4 million. According to Sotheby's, it is now the most valuable work of Modern art ever sold at auction. (Sotheby's)

What does a notorious gold toilet and a nearly destroyed Klimt painting have in common? They christened Sotheby’s first sale out of its new U.S. headquarters in New York on Tuesday evening in a buzzy, record-breaking night.

Early on, the headlining artwork by Gustav Klimt, “Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer,” became the most valuable work of modern art to ever sell at auction, reaching US$236.4 million to gasps and applause from the room during the 20-minute bidding war.

It was also the most expensive work of art ever sold by Sotheby’s globally. The portrait of Klimt’s patrons’ young daughter, made in the last years of the artist’s life, was spared from destruction during the Second World War when it was separated from his works that later burned during a fire at Immendorf Castle in Austria.

The artwork was part of the collection of Estée Lauder heir Leonard A. Lauder, who died earlier this year. Across the sale, artworks met or exceeded their high estimates, including an Edvard Munch painting at $35.1 million.

The sale so far has marked a triumphant night for the top end of the art market, which has been experiencing a slowdown for more than two years.

During the contemporary sales, following the Lauder collection, the most unusual lot of the night will be the 220-pound, 18-karat gold toilet by the conceptual artist and enfant terrible Maurizio Cattelan. The opulent sculpture, titled “America,” is a sibling to the infamous version, which was exhibited in the Guggenheim as a working toilet and later stolen from Winston Churchill’s birthplace, Blenheim Palace, and never found.

In a first, the starting bid for “America,” which has been in private hands since 2017, was ideated as a moving target according to the current value of its weight in gold; bidders will start from there.

Marquee sales will continue to take place this week, with Sotheby’s hoping to take in more than $1 billion total by the end, based on its high estimates. The pre-sale exhibitions drew crowds to the array of artworks by Kerry James Marshall, Yves Klein, Henri Matisse, Cecily Brown and Jeff Koons — as well as lines to Cattelan’s toilet, which was installed on the Breuer Building’s fourth floor in a tiny, mirrored bathroom with a look-but-don’t-touch rule.

Sotheby’s new HQ, previously home to the Whitney Museum of American Art and later, an outpost for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s contemporary collection, has signalled a major shift in its public-facing presence, aligning itself just off the city’s famed Museum Mile, where many of its most important institutions reside.

The opening comes at a rocky time for the art market, as global sales of arts and antiques fell for a second consecutive year in 2024, according to the latest annual Art Market Report by Art Basel and UBS, and several major brick-and-mortar galleries have shuttered or shifted operations.

In May, following the springtime marquee sales in New York, The Art Newspaper reported that auction houses Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips saw an 8% slump in sales compared to the year prior, with top lots failing to find buyers or being withdrawn ahead of the sale.

But with the highly successful off-season sale of art collector and patron Pauline Karpidas’ surrealist works this summer, as well as reports of mid-market resilience, some analyses have cautiously pointed to a market rebound. Christie’s fared well during its two-part 20th-century sale on Monday evening, reaching $690 million with fees — a substantial increase from 2024 — led by a $62 million Mark Rothko painting.

Record-smashing sales of individual artworks exceeding $40 million haven’t been a guarantee this year, but later in the week, Sotheby’s has another rabbit in the hat — a psychologically haunting painting by Frida Kahlo, “El sueño (La cama),” which could break Georgia O’Keeffe’s record for the most expensive artwork publicly sold by a female artist.

Jacqui Palumbo, CNN