Klimt’s Adele goes for $135 million

Gustav Klimt: Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer

Klimt’s Adele goes for $135 million

The rumours have turned into confirmed news: the chairman of cosmetic company Estée Lauder and founder of the New York Neue Galerie, Ronald Lauder, has recently acquired the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, for a price in the region of $135 million, smashing any other price paid for a work of art (the previous record was an also astonishing $104 million paid at Sotheby’s for Garçon a la pipe , by Pablo Picasso)

The painting was part of a group of five canvases recently returned to the heirs of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer. The Nazis confiscated his paintings during the World War II, and after the war, the canvases were placed at the National Gallery of Austria in 1948.

We have no news about the other four paintings owned by the heirs of Bloch-Bauer (including a second version of this work) but, knowing the success of this transaction, we can guess that the most important Art dealers (a.k.a. Christie’s, a.k.a. Sotheby’s) have already contacted with the family for a future deal.