Gustav Klimt portrait sells for R4bn, breaking modern-art auction records

A GUSTAV Klimt portrait made history last week when it sold for an astonishing $236.4 million (around R4 billion) at an auction in New York, becoming the most expensive modern artwork ever sold at auction and the second most expensive painting in history, second only to Da Vinci's Salvator Mundi which went for $405m.

- VIVIAN WARBY

The artwork, Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, completed between 1914 and 1916, is one of the Austrian artist's rare full-length portraits from the final years of his career. Painted in whites and golds, it captures Lederer, the daughter of one of Klimt's prominent Viennese patrons, in a strikingly modern, elongated pose that defined his late style.

The sale unfolded in a tense 20-minute bidding war involving six collectors, with the winning bid landing at $205 million before premiums pushed the final price to $236.4 million.

The portrait headlined an elite Sotheby's auction featuring works from the estate of billionaire collector Leonard Lauder. Lauder - the heir to the Estee Lauder fortune - was a major art collector and had acquired the piece in the 1980s.