Jackson Pollock: Number 5, 1948

© AP Photo/ Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center

Pollock’s Number 5, 1948, sold for $140 million

If the rumours are true (which is quite probable) the portrait of Adele Bloch-bauer by Gustav Klimt is no longer the most expensive painting ever sold, as the stunning “Number 5, 1948” , by Jackson Pollock has been sold by its owner, David Geffen, for the spectacular price of $140 million, surpassing Klimt’s record for $5 millions.

Painted in 1948, at the heights of Pollock’s powers, the work is a powerful drip of great dimensions (130 x 260 cm .) that was formerly in the collections of some of the most important contemporary Art collectors of recent years, including S. I. Newhouse Jr or Geffen himself. The buyer is rumored to be Mexican investor David Martínez.

This spectacular price can be the prelude of the sale of many important works by the author still in private hands. For example, ” Lucifer”, one of the five or six best works by Pollock, quite better than ” Number 5, 1948″, and belonging to the Anderson Collection of San Francisco, can be estimated well over $200 million in the crazy market of today.