A painting of Rene Magritte It broke an auction record for the surrealist artist on Tuesday, selling for more than $121 million at Christie’s in New York.
The seminal 1954 painting had been valued at $95 million, and the previous record for a work by Magritte (1898-1967) was $79 million, set in 2022.
After a nearly 10-minute bidding war on Tuesday, “Empire of Light” (“L’Empire des lumières”) sold for $121,160,000, “achieving a world record price for the artist and for a work of art.” surrealist at auction,” according to Christie’s auction house.
The painting – which depicts a house at night, illuminated by a lamp post, under a bright blue sky – is part of a series by the Belgian artist that shows the play of shadows and light.
“Empire of Light” was part of the private collection of Mica Ertegunan interior designer who fled communist Romania to settle in the United States, where she became an influential figure in the world of the arts.
She passed away at the end of 2023 and was married to the deceased Ahmet Ertegunthe music mogul who founded the Atlantic Records record label.
The sale of the Magritte painting was an expected highlight of this week’s fall sales season in New York, at a time when the art market has seen a slowdown since last year.
Christie’s — controlled by Artemis, the investment holding company owned by the Pinault family — said sales totaled $2.1 billion in the first half of this year.
That represents a decline for the second year in a row, after a peak of $4.1 billion in 2022, as the world emerged from the coronavirus pandemic.
During the same Christie’s auction on Tuesday, a celebrated 1964 painting of a gas station by Ed Ruscha86, titled “Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half,” sold for $68.26 million, setting a new auction record for the American pop artist.
“Standard Station” is a variation of a series of paintings with ‘pop’ reminiscences that portray from a strange angle and with an almost photographic perspective an element as nondescript as a gasoline service station.
The Christie’s auction included some of the essential artists in every collection of modern art that goes on sale twice a year in this house and in its rival Sotheby’s: Monet, Picasso, Giacometti, Cezanne, Miró and David Hockney. Also highlighted were the prices obtained by Giacometti (Femme qui marche, 26 million) Joan Mitchell (City Landscape, 17 million) and David Hockney (Still Life on a Glass Table, 19 million).
Source: AFP and EFE
