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Picasso's painting, "Nu au Plateau"
"Nu au Plateau", Pablo Picasso's 1932 portrait of his mistress, sold for 106.4 million dollars in New York's Christie's Tuesday night, a world record auction price for a single work.
The painting, more than 1.66 by 1.33 meters, shows Picasso's mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, both reclining and as a bust. Picasso's profile can be discerned in the blue background.
The painting was priced to sell for between 70 million and 90 million dollars. Six bidders showed interest in the painting. After a fierce round of bidding, Nicholas Hall, an expert at Christie's, took the winning bid by telephone, but declined to say who he was bidding for.
The sale breaks the 104.3 million dollar record set three months ago by Alberto Giacometti's "Walking Man I" sculpture at Sotheby's.
The year "Nu au Plateau" was painted, 1932, is considered a turning point for Picasso. It was then that he began creating luscious canvases of Marie-Thérèse that were unlike anything he had done before: bigger and more sensual.
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