Leica camera - Most expensive camera ever sold at an auction in Vienna, Austria

Leica camera - Most expensive camera ever sold at an auction in Vienna,Austria

A rare 1923 Leica went for 2.16 million euros at an auction in Vienna at the weekend, making it the most expensive camera ever sold, the auctioneer said.

An anonymous buyer won the bidding battle for the German camera, which still works and is one of around 25 test versions of Leica 0-Series cameras produced in 1923, two years before the start of serial production. Only half of them have been preserved.

                                             Most expensive camera - Leica camera Picture

Including the buyer's premium, the price paid at the WestLicht auction on Saturday was more than seven times the starting price of 300,000 euros, WestLicht said.

It did not identify the previous owner, who it said was a private collector in Europe.

A different Leica 0-series sold in November 2007 for 336,000 euros at auction, and then again in May 2011 for 1.32 million euros including the buyer's premium, WestLicht said.

The Guinness world record for the Largest collection of film camera was set by Richard LaRiviere (USA), who owns 894 different film cameras.

Guinness World Records also recognized the world record for the Largest collection of still cameras (still photography) was set by Dilish Parekh of Mumbai, India, who has a collection of 4,425 antique cameras.

The camera was picked up by an anonymous bidder, and the price paid was more than seven times the starting price of €300,000. The bidding stopped at €1.8 million, and the rest is for taxes and other fees.

In 1923, the German photography equipment manufacturer released only 25 test versions of Leica 0-series cameras.

These test models were the prototypes for the famous Leica A cameras, the first commercially successful compact cameras to use 35mm film.

Serial production started about two years after that. Of the 25 test versions, only half the number have survived.

The World's Most Expensive Camera is still in working condition.

Leica was founded in 1849, specialising in the development of lenses and microscopes. Optical engineer Oskar Barnack worked in the microscope division, but was a keen photographer in his spare time.

Most expensive camera: Leica camera breaks world record Video:-


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Lost Leonardo da Vinci painting to break World Record

Lost Leonardo da Vinci painting to break World Record

The oil painting, which depicts Christ with one hand raised in blessing and the other cradling a globe, is entitled 'Salvator Mundi' or 'Saviour of the World'.

Its discovery has been hailed by scholars as one of the most important artistic finds of the last 100 years.

For centuries it was believed to have been the work of a protégé of Leonardo.

But recent restoration work convinced a panel of eminent scholars in Britain, Italy and the US that it was created by the Renaissance master.

It is reportedly due to go on display for the first time at the National Gallery in London in November.

It is then expected to be offered for sale by the consortium of American dealers that own it, having reportedly bought it an estate sale about six years ago.

The oil on wood painting was once owned by King Charles I, and after his execution was passed it on to his son, Charles II.

It then vanished into obscurity until it turned up in the possession of Sir Francis Cook, a 19th-century British collector.

It was sold in 1958 for just £45, having been attributed to Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, one of Leonardo's pupils.

When the painting, which measures 26 in by 18 in, was acquired by the American consortium, restorers were brought in to scrape off centuries of grime and varnish to correct earlier, botched restoration efforts.

But as they delicately returned the painting to its original state, they began to think that it was the work of the master himself.

The exact circumstances of the painting's rediscovery and how much it might be worth were cloaked in secrecy yesterday.

Prof Martin Kemp, Emeritus Professor of the History of Art at Oxford University, was one of four of the world's foremost Leonardo experts invited to inspect the painting at the National Gallery.

But he told The Daily Telegraph that he could not comment until the owner of the work issued an official announcement, probably in September.

Pietro Marani, an Italian art historian who directed the restoration of Leonardo's Last Supper in Milan, viewed the work in London last year.

"Before the restoration it was in a bad state, covered by old layers of paint. But during the restoration the quality of the painting emerged – the marvellous colours, the reds and blues of the garment (worn by Christ), which are reminiscent of The Last Supper.

A comparison with another da Vinci work, the Virgin of the Rocks, "also seems to confirm that this is a Leonardo painting," said Prof Marani, along with scientific tests of the paint.

The National Gallery would not confirm or deny whether the picture will feature in its forthcoming exhibition, 'Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan", which starts on Nov 9, but its appearance would be a major coup.

The exhibition of 60 paintings and drawings is already being claimed as "sensational" because it will gather together Leonardo paintings that have never before been seen in the UK. "Discussions are still ongoing with the owner," a spokeswoman said.

ARTnews magazine, which first reported the discovery this week, suggested that when the painting is auctioned it could sell for as much as $200 million, an amount that would smash previous records.

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John James Audubon's - World's Most Expensive Book sold Birds of America

The copy, which comes from the collection of Lord Hesketh, had been expected to fetch up to £6m.

Only 119 complete copies of the 19th-Century book are known to exist, and 108 are owned by museums and libraries.

A separate edition of the book on ornithology sold for a record-breaking price of $8.8m (£5.7m) a decade ago.

It contains 1,000 life-sized illustrations of almost 500 breeds and took wildlife artist John James Audubon 12 years to complete.

He did so by travelling across America, shooting the birds and then hanging them on bits of wire to paint them.

The artist then went to Britain to print the volumes and targeted the rich to buy copies.
London dealer Michael Tollemache, who bought the copy at the Sotheby's auction, said the book was "priceless".
Lord Hesketh's collection also included a rare copy of Shakespeare's First Folio, which Sotheby's said was "the most important book in all of English Literature".
Of the 750 that were probably printed, only 219 are known to exist today.
The copy, which dates back to 1827 and has three pages missing, sold for £1.5m.
It is one of only three textually complete copies to exist in private hands in a comparably early binding.

John James Audubon's - Birds of America - World's Most Expensive Book World Record Video

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Aston Martin DB5 - James Bond's Aston Martin DB5 Soldout in $4.2M at London Auction

A classic car collector from Ohio made the winning bid of £2.6 million ($4.2 million) for James Bond's 1964 Aston Martin DB5 in a London auction on Wednesday.

Harry Yeaggy told the BBC he planned to take the vehicle first made famous by Sean Connery in Goldfinger out for a spin around London that night. "We're going to have a bit of fun with it," he said.

His winning bid at the RM Auctions sale in Battersea came in under the estimated £3 million. "I thought a European would get it," Yeaggy said, "but I guess they don't appreciate James Bond like we do."

He plans to display the car at his private museum in Ohio.

The vehicle as depicted in the Bond movies has revolving licence plates, Browning machine-guns, an ejector seat, a bullet-proof rear windshield and an early version of today's satellite navigation system.

It was previously owned by Jerry Lee, a U.S. broadcasting executive who paid $12,000 US for it in 1969. The proceeds of the sale will go to his charitable foundation that supports education and international anti-crime projects.

Bond's creator, novelist Ian Fleming, had originally placed Bond in a Bentley, but the filmmakers preferred the Aston Martin, which at the time competed with the Jaguar E-type for the lucrative British and American sports car market.


James Bond Real Film Car 1964 Aston Martin DB5 Video

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World's Most Expensive Book set a world record price of £6 million at auction in London

World's Most Expensive Book set a world record price of £6 million at auction in London.

It’s the most expensive book in the world, breathtaking in its stunning detail and a world away from your average bird-watcher’s guide.
And the story of the man behind the 170-year-old collection of life-sized bird paintings – many depicting awesome creatures of prey – is just as rich in its appeal.

John James Audubon was the remarkable, nature-loving frontiersman who set out into the wilderness to hunt and to paint – and left us the remarkable Birds of America, a rare copy of which is set to fetch up to £6million at auction later this year.

Audubon was born in 1785 on the turbulent Caribbean island of Haiti as the illegitimate son of a French sea captain and his mistress.

He lived through revolution, bankruptcy and rejection before achieving world-wide fame for his masterpiece on New World ornithology. He grew up in France before emigrating to the newly-formed United States of America in 1803, quickly making his way to the wild heart of the continent in Kentucky.

Without any experience of painting, the explorer decided to draw his new home country’s vast array of colourful bird life and – equipped with paints and a gun – headed south down the great Mississippi river to begin his work.

He said later of his quirky adventure in the name of art: “I took up my gun, my notebook and my pencils and went forth to the woods.”

Audubon, who later became known as The Woodsman, spent 12 years hunting every bird in America, shooting and hanging them from pieces of wire before painting them in life-like poses in full-scale.

The eccentric traveller became so obsessed with his fascinating work he was briefly jailed for bankruptcy after his passion for hunting and drawing caused him to neglect his own dry goods store in Henderson, Kentucky.

Despite his painstaking effort depicting nearly 500 of the 700 native American bird species in vivid colour – totalling 1,000 lifesize prints – his work was initially spurned by the country’s snobby East Coast intellectuals.

So Audubon was forced in 1826 to set sail for Great Britain, where his outdoorsman image and vivid illustrations caused a sensation.

The trip to these shores was a final throw of the dice – and it paid off weeks after he arrived in Liverpool in the summer of 1826.

Once on Merseyside, Audubon was taken up by the Rathbones, a well-to-do merchant family.

And he became an immediate social hit – playing the role of the rough all-American woodsman and startling the fashionable women he met at dinner parties with his “Red Indian war cry”.

But still he could not find a publisher, partly because he insisted engravings of his pictures must appear on giant sheets of paper almost 40 inches by 30 so even the largest birds such as the wild turkey could be represented life-size.

Then his remarkable paintings caused a sensation in Edinburgh when they were exhibited at the city’s newly-built Royal Institution.

People were amazed by their real-life violent depictions – such as hawks ripping up their bloodied prey.

He was introduced to the city’s top engraver, William Home Lizars, who reportedly said: “My God! I never saw anything like this before!”

With his tanned good-looks and shoulder-length hair styled with bear grease, the wolf-skin wearing French-American made a huge impression as a real life Davy Crockett.

And the Scottish capital made an equally big impression on Audubon, who returned to the city on another four occasions.

Of his first visit to Scotland, Audubon wrote: “I think the Time spent there was Six Weeks of the densest Happiness I have met with in any Part of my life.

“I believe Scotland would be the Country I should chuse (sic) to spend the Remainder of my Days in.”

Audubon died in New York in 1851 aged 65 – in time to see his astonishing book selling for $1,000 a piece.

The rare copy due to go under the hammer at Sotheby’s in London in December is one of just 11 in the world held in private hands.

Another 108 are in academic or museum collections.

One copy set a world record price of £5.7million at auction in London 10 years ago – and the latest to be sold has an estimated value of up £6million.

If you don’t have that kind of money to spare, a “Baby Elephant Folio” version, less than half the size of the original, is available for a relatively cheap £125 on Amazon.

The collection of prints in the full-size book measure more than three feet by two feet.

They needed to be that big because, as Audubon said, having a small book was “all very well with weed warblers but when you come to bald eagles you’re going to need a big book”.

Audubon himself described the size of the book as “double elephant”.

The Birds of America was issued in four volumes from 1827 to 1838.

And it was so highly regarded in his day that it was mentioned in Charles Darwin’s evolution masterpiece On the Origin of Species in 1859.

David Goldthorpe, director and senior specialist at Sotheby’s, said of Birds of America: “This magnificent collection is an example of what is known as ‘high spot collecting’ – when a collector seeks out the very best across a range of fields. The forthcoming auction offers the twin peaks of book collecting - the most expensive book in the world, Audubon’s Birds of America, and the most important book in all of English Literature,
Shakespeare’s First Folio.”

The copy going under the hammer in the Sotheby’s sale rooms had been acquired by Frederick Fermor-Hesketh, the 2nd Baron Hesketh, who died in 1955 at the age of 39.

The original watercolours for the book are housed at the at the New-York Historical Society.

In Britain, Glasgow’s Mitchell Library still has a Birds of America but Edinburgh University sold its copy in 1992 for a then world record price of £2.3million.

The Shakespeare volume includes 36 plays and only 219 copies of the 750 published are still in existence. Only two copies have such complete text and with such an early binding, according to the auction house. It is expected to fetch more than £1million at the December 7 sale.

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Napoleon Bonaparte's Hair sold for US$13,000 at an auction in New Zealand

A lock of hair cut from Napoleon Bonaparte's head after he died has sold for US$13,000 at an auction in New Zealand.

Extra phone lines were installed for the sale to cope with an expected rush of international buyers seeking to snip up the hair cut from the head of former French Emperor a day after his death in 1821 while he was in exile on the island of St. Helena.

The circle of hair was part of a collection brought to New Zealand in 1864 by Denzil Ibbetson, a British commissary officer and artist.

Ibbetson served on St. Helena during the six years that Napoleon was held on the island after being defeated at the Battle of Waterloo.


The collection of about 40 items, including sketches by Ibbetson of Napoleon on his death bed at the age of 51, was sold by the descendants of Ibbetson.

"The collection has really been in remarkable condition and the family has to be commended for preserving this material for all this time, it's nearly 200 years old," Hamish Coney, managing director of the Art+Object Auction House, told Reuters Television.

"In terms of a historical collection that will be located in New Zealand, it's probably one of the most important collections that has ever been found."

According to the auction house the lock was bought by an unnamed collector in London.

Coney said as well as local interest in New Zealand, there had been interest from Hong Kong, the United States, Lithuania and France.

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World’s Biggest Gold Coin in Vienna 2010

World’s Biggest Gold Coin in Vienna set Auction World Record 2010.
The world’s largest gold coin, a Maple Leaf worth C$4.06 million ($3.9 million) at current prices, will be auctioned in Vienna on June 25.

The coin, made of pure gold, weighs 100 kilograms (3,527 ounces) and is 53 centimeters (21 inches) in diameter, the Dorotheum auction house said on its website. It has a face value of C$1 million. Starting bids will be based on daily bullion prices, the site shows.

Gold climbed to a record $1,252.11 an ounce on June 8 in London and has gained 11 percent this year on investor demand for a haven from Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis. Purchases of coins are tightening supplies and boosting the premiums added to the price of bullion, according to dealers including Dublin- based GoldCore Ltd.
The coin is being sold on behalf of the liquidators of Austrian investment and venture-capital firm AvW Invest AG, Dorotheum spokeswoman Ingeborg Fiegl said today by e-mail. She was unable to identify the liquidators.

The coin, listed in the current edition of Guinness World Records, was previously on loan to the collection of Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, according to the Dorotheum. One side shows three maple leaves, Canada’s national symbol, and the other bears the image of Queen Elizabeth II, the auction house said.

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Most Expensive Bracelet Sold £4.8 million - Christie’s Jewels Auction 2010

A Kashmir 49.61 carat sapphire and diamond bracelet sold for £4.8 million at Christie’s Jewels: The Hong Kong Sale auction on Tuesday, the highest price ever achieved for a bracelet and £3.6 million more than it made in 1988.

The most expensive individual item sold was a single-strand jadeite bead necklace, which at £5m accounted for over 12 percent of the total £41.2 million raised. A total of 256 lots were sold, with the many of the most expensive going to Asian private or anonymous buyers. The auction was 89 percent sold by lots and 94 percent sold by value.

Christie’s Asia Jewellery and Jadeite Department director Vickie Sek said: “At more than US$60 million (£40.9 million), this auction is the most important ever organized by Christie’s anywhere in the world.

This confirms the position of Hong Kong and Asia as a premier centre for the finest jewels and gems.”

“It is interesting to note that the Kashmir sapphire bracelet which sold for US$6.9 million had been sold by Christie’s previously in 1988 for US$902,000 (£615,000), which represents US$1.7 million (£1.2 million) in today’s currency. Kashmir sapphires, Golconda diamonds, natural pearls, and important jade are faring better than ever, with prices reaching new levels with which we are confident.”

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World’s finest collection of important Chinese snuff bottles set world record 2010

LONDON.- Bonhams Hong Kong today celebrated the first-ever “Golden Gavel Auction” in its history, when part of the world’s finest collection of important Chinese snuff bottles, the Mary and George Bloch Collection, sold 100% and achieved world record prices. Against presale estimates of HK$20,000,000 (£1.8m), the sale total was HK$66,146,800 (£5.8m), with every one of the 140 rare bottles successfully sold. This figure was double the previous sale total for a single-owner snuff bottle auction held in New York on 19 March 2008.

         World’s finest collection of important Chinese snuff bottles Picture

Auctioneer Colin Sheaf, Chairman of Bonhams Asia, commented: “This is the finest auction of Chinese art which Bonhams has held in Asia, and the record prices proved that the market for Chinese art remains very strong for the most important pieces”.

As expected, the star of the auction was lot 129, one of the most beautiful bottles in private hands ever made for the Imperial Court of 18th Century China. Estimated at HK$1,800,000 – 3,000,000, international bidders from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore and the UK battled the bidding up to a final figure of HK$9,280,000 (£821,383,000), a new world record price for a snuff bottle.

Other record prices included lot 140, an inscribed nephrite pebble-material snuff bottle which went for a world record price for any jade snuff bottle at HK$6,032,000 (estimate: HK$1,000,000 – 2,000,000); lot 132, an Imperial “famille-rose” ‘bird on branch’ enamelled glass snuff bottle, Qianlong mark and period, which sold at HK$5,248,000 (estimate: HK$2,000,000 – 4,00,000) a world record for any enamelled glass snuff bottle; lot 27, an Imperial famille-rose poreclain bottle, Qianlong mark and period, similar to others in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, which sold at HK$3,960,000 (estimate: HK$1,400,000 – 2,000,000), a world record for any enamelled porcelain snuff bottle; lot 8, a double-overlay sapphire-blue and white glass ‘dragon’ snuff bottle which sold at HK$672,000 (estimate: HK$220,000 – 350,000), a world record price for any glass overlay snuff bottle; lot 34, an inside-painted rock-crystal snuff bottle which sold at HK$336,000 (estimate: HK$60,000 – 120,000), a world record for any inside-painted snuff bottle by Gan Xuanwen; and two other superb Imperial Beijing enamel bottles, lot 77, which flew past its estimate of HK$1,400,000 – 2,500,000 to make HK$4,200,000 and lot 67, which sold for HK$2,640,000 (estimate HK$1,800,000 – 3,000,000).

Many of the finest bottles at Bonhams were bid for and bought by active collectors from Mainland China, the first time that such strong demand from Chinese buyers has been seen anywhere in the world for Imperial Chinese snuff bottles.

Bonhams’ Head of Chinese Ceramic and Works of Art in Hong Kong Julian King who prepared the auction, said: “Today saw a new buying power in the world market for Imperial Chinese art. This marked an important change in the whole structure of prices for the finest pieces at Bonhams.”

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World's most expensive stamp 2010 - Most expensive stamp sold in Geneva.

A David Feldman employee shows what is believed to be the world's most expensive stamp, the Swedish "Treskilling Yellow - Error of Color", at David Feldman Philatelists auctioneers in Geneva, Switzerland, Thursday, May 20, 2010. Treskilling Yellow is estimated to be worth 1.5 - 2.0 million euro (US dlrs 1.85 - 2.45 million) .

It will be sold on May 22, 2010 in Geneva. The first stamp of Sweden issued in 1855 was printed in green, but 30 years later one example was found in yellow. The stamp was discovered by a Swedish schoolboy on a letter of his grandmother in 1885 and sold to a stamps dealer for 7 crowns.

GENEVA — The Swedish "Treskilling Yellow" retained its title as the world's most expensive stamp when it changed hands at a private sale shrouded in secrecy, the auctioneer claimed Saturday.

The one-of-a-kind 1855 misprint was sold to a group of buyers who asked that their identities and the winning bid be kept confidential, said auctioneer David Feldman.

He declined to reveal whether the sale matched the 2.875 million Swiss francs (then about $2.3 million) price it set a record for in 1996.

"It is still worth more than any other single stamp" including the even older "2 Penny Post Office Mauritius Blue" that sold for 1.5 million francs (then $1.4 million) in 1993, said Feldman.

He added that both the price and identity of the buyers, who took part in the telephone auction against a single rival bidder, would likely become public knowledge eventually.

Noted U.S. stamp expert Robert Odenweller said it wasn't unusual for buyers of such valuable items to keep details of the sale secret at first, only to release information bit by bit later.

"The people who run around with that kind of change in their pockets have their own ideas about publicity," Odenweller told The Associated Press.

For years the owner of another unique stamp, the 1856 "British Guiana 1 cent Magenta," remained a mystery until it transpired that it had been bought for nearly $1 million by chemicals fortune heir John du Pont in 1980, Odenweller said. That stamp is believed to lie in a bank vault while du Pont serves a 13- to 30-year sentence for third degree murder.

"It's fairly possible that if the British Guiana were ever put up for sale again it could blow everything out of the water," said Odenweller, a past president of the Collectors Club of New York.

The Treskilling Yellow is the only known misprint of an 1855 three shilling stamp that was supposed to be green. It has fabled status among collectors and is considered one of the world's most valuable objects for its size.

The auction house valued the stamp at euro1.5 million to euro2 million ($1.87 million to $2.5 million) before the sale, but actual sales prices can vary greatly depending on what the buyers feel such unique items are worth.

Feldman told the AP that Saturday's auction "happened very quickly because the buyers clearly knew how much they were prepared to pay."

The economic downturn has made people more careful about bidding for such pricey items, he said. At the same time, stamps are increasingly being seen as investment opportunities, he added. "People are looking for investments they can hold in their hands."

The Treskilling Yellow has changed hands at least once since 1996, but little is known about the last owner except that he or she had to sell the stamp because it had been put up as financial collateral.

The first collector to own the stamp is said to have been a Swedish schoolboy, who found it in 1885 among a pile of letters left by his grandparents. A similar tale is told about the 1 cent Magenta.

Feldman said the Treskilling Yellow was last displayed in public a week ago at the London 2010 Festival of Stamps.

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World's most coveted car - Ferrari 250 GTO

World's most coveted Ferrari 250 GTO car is Sold.

Only 36 of the iconic 1963 Ferrari 250 GTO were ever made. On the rare occasions they come up for sale they can fetch millions

RM Auctions believes it has just sold the world's most coveted car - a rare 1963 Ferrari 250 GTO. The marque (chassis no. 4675 GT), in unmistakable Ferrari red and with the prancing horses emblazoned on the hood, has an excellent pedigree. One of only 36 250 GTOs originally produced and one of a limited few with Series II GTO bodywork, it left the factory in April 1963 and was subsequently raced by Guido Fossati, Jean Guichet, Oddone Sigala, Vincenzo Nember and Luigi Taramazzo, rarely finishing outside the top three in its class and achieving numerous race wins.

                                           Ferrari 250 GTO Photo
"The exclusivity of Ferrari's 250 GTO cannot be understated. As they rarely come to market, new owners become part of a very exclusive 'club' and are welcomed with open arms at literally any of the world's great concours events, races and rallies," said Max Girardo, Managing Director of RM Europe.

"We are pleased to have been able to unite this exceptional car with a new and immensely enthusiastic owner. It's fantastic that this car will now be used in earnest on the classic car scene around Europe."

In addition to being considered one of the most beautiful cars ever built by Ferrari, the GTO, with 302bhp (at 7500rpm) and a top speed of 174mph, won many World Championships for the Modenese car-builder.

Over the years, this car has received many plaudits from the world's motoring enthusiasts. The car moved garages for an undisclosed figure.

As a motor auction house, RM doesn't do too badly, either. It has achieved many impressive motor car auction results at prestigious locations around the globe, including the sale of seven of the top 10 Ferraris ever sold at auction.

The company generates an average of US$50 million in private treaty transactions each year.

So, if you're bitterly disappointed about missing out on the 4675 classic, RM is looking for a buyer for an extremely rare, race-bred 1967 Ferrari 330 P4 (chassis number 0858). Another one for your collection?

No word on the price of the coveted Ferrari, but a recent event, the inaugural Sporting Classics of Monaco auction, reaped the following rewards.

Five automobiles fetched prices in excess of 2,000,000 euro (US$2,466,000) and two new world records were set. Bidders from 33 different countries made their intentions known on the telephone, over the Internet and assembled in the standing-room-only venue, and approximately 3,300 people watched the live streaming video coverage of the sale over the Internet.

The event's top seller was a rare 1962 Ferrari 400 Superamerica Cabriolet Pininfarina SWB, s/n 3309 SA, setting a new world record for a Superamerica when it sold for 2,800,000 euro (US$3,799,600). A rare 1960 Maserati Tipo 61 'Birdcage', s/n 2470, also set a new world record for a Birdcage at 2,464,000 euro (US$3,343,648).

The sale's cover car, the 1937 BMW 328 MM 'Bügelfalte', s/n 85032, exchanged hands less than 24 hours after the sale's conclusion for a confidential sum.

Overall, 88 of the 105 pre- and post-war motor cars were sold for a total of 33,235,917 euro (US$45,101,139), making Sporting Classics of Monaco's debut one of the most successful automobile auctions ever held.

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World's most expensive painting - Picasso painting sets art auction World record 2010

                               Picasso painting picture


World's most expensive painting set world record for art auction sales - Picasso painting.

A 1932 painting by Pablo Picasso sold on Tuesday night in New York for 106.5 million dollars, a new world record auction price for a work of art, Christie’s announced.

The painting, Nu au Plateau de Sculpteur (Nude, Green Leaves and Bust), has Marie—Therese Walter, the artist’s mistress in reclining and also in a bust. Picasso included his own profile in the blue background.

The auction price topped the record set in February of 104.3 million dollars for a Giacometti sculpture. That work, titled Walking Man I, sold in London at Sotheby’s auction house.

More than half a dozen people bid on the 1932 canvas, which the Brodys acquired in the 1950s from Picasso's dealers, with the winning bid taken by a Christie's executive via telephone. The final price of $106,482,500 included the auction's house's commission.

"Nude, Green Leaves and Bust" has been publicly exhibited only once since 1951, the last time it changed hands. The year it was painted, 1932, is considered a turning point for the artist; it was then that he began creating luscious canvases featuring Walter that were unlike anything he had done before.

More paintings from the Brody estate, including works by Matisse, Braque and Giacometti, will be sold by Christie's in the coming weeks.
World's most expensive painting - Picasso painting sets art auction World record 2010 Video

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