Record price for Picasso painting

6 May 2004

NEW YORK – Spanish painter Pablo Picasso’s “Boy with a Pipe” set a record when it sold at auction for more than EUR 86.6 million (USD 104 million) to an anonymous bidder, it was reported Thursday.

The famous work – which actually bears the French title “Garcon a la pipe” – was auctioned for EUR 77.5 (USD 93 million),  but with Sotheby’s commission the total price amounted to some EUR 86.6 million,  according to auction house officials.

Until now, the highest price ever paid for a Picasso was for the work from the artist’s 1901-1902 “Blue period” entitled “Woman with Crossed Arms” (“Femme aux bras croises”), auctioned by Christie’s in November 2000 for EUR 45.8 million.

The record price paid for any painting to date was EUR 68.75 million in 1990 for Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh’s “Portrait of Dr Gachet”.

“Boy with a Pipe” was completed in 1905 during the 24-year-old Picasso’s 1904-1906 “Rose period”. It is considered one of the artist’s best works still in private hands.

The oil painting measures 99 x 81 centimetres and depicts a boy in Paris, where Picasso lived at the time, wearing blue overalls and holding a pipe in his left hand.

He wears a crown of roses amidst an almost dreamlike, rosy background.

The painting was sold to an anonymous bidder, who in a methodical manner steadily outbid other interested parties in bids by mobile phones.

Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain, in 1881 and died in Notre-Dame-de-Vie, France, in 1973.

[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

Subject: Spanish news