Daily art news

Picasso's La Lecture Sells at Sotheby's for £25.2 Million in Sale Totalling £68.8 Million. LONDON.- Tonight, Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Evening sale was led by Pablo Picasso’s iconic 1932 painting of Marie-Thérèse Walter, La Lecture, which sold to a round of applause for £25,241,250 /$40,711,612 / €29,744,296, more than double the low estimate (est. £12 – 18 million/$18.5-27.8 million). Following a heated bidding contest that lasted six minutes among at least seven bidders, both on the phone and in the saleroom, the work finally sold to an anonymous buyer bidding over the telephone. Achieving a strong total of £68,834,400 / $111,023,004 / €81,114,475, well within the pre-sale estimate of £55,630,000 - 79,250,000**, the sale was 84.5% sold by value. The average lot value for the works sold this evening was £2.15 million/ $3.5 million. 

Exhibition at Musee du Luxembourg in Paris Spotlights German Master Lucas Cranach. PARIS (AP).- Like an enterprising Andy Warhol of the 16th century, German Renaissance master Lucas Cranach the Elder produced multiple paintings of the same subject, churning out strikingly similar versions of his trademark soft-edged nudes and angel-faced Madonnas. 

This penchant for repetition did nothing for Cranach's reputation, and for centuries he was overshadowed by another giant of German art, Albrecht Durer. A new exhibition at Paris' Musee du Luxembourg aims to restore Cranach's image by highlighting his unique, velvety style and showing how the artist — the official painter for the Saxon court of Wittenberg and a friend of reformer Martin Luther — reacted to the tumult of his epoch. 

Gauguin Masterpiece Leads Christie's Auction of Impressionist and Modern Art in London. LONDON.- The Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Auction and the sale of The Art of the Surreal will take place on 9 February 2011 at 7pm with a pre-sale estimate of £73,880,000 to £109,060,000 (corresponding estimate in 2010: £56.5 million to £80.8 million). This is the second highest pre-sale estimate for the February Impressionist sales at Christie’s in London. The leading highlight of the sales is Nature morte à “L’Espérance”, an historically important still life painted by Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) in 1901 while he was living in Tahiti. The work has been exhibited at over 20 major museum exhibitions including the artist’s first landmark Retrospective at the Grand Palais, Paris, in 1906. It is expected to realise £7 million to £10 million.