Picasso Painting Sold $139 Million, The Most Valuable Art Work Auctioned This Year

Photos (Reuters)

JAKARTA - Pablo Picasso's painting in 1932 Femme la montre sold for more than $139 million. This painting was auctioned off in Sotheby's New York as well as showing this work of art including the most valuable item of the year.

This work stands out in the autumn art auction season in New York City, which many people see as determining the direction of the art market. The collection is sold as part of the sale of Emily Fisher Landau's late collection of $400 million.

The nine-digit price makes it the second most expensive Picasso painting sold at auction, after Les femmes d'Alger (Version 'O'), which sold $179.3 million, including the buyer's premium, in Christie's in 2015.

The Femme la montre, which translates from French to Women in Hours, is a portrait of the lover of artist Marie-Theare Walter who sits on a chair like a blue background.

Reporting from Reuters, this Eastern watch is a motif also seen in Picasso's artwork made by his wife, the Russian-Ukraine balerina Olga Khokhlova.

Walter was 17 years old when he met 45-year-old Picasso in Paris, and the two then had a secret relationship when he was married to Khokhlova. Walter became his subject for a number of artworks, including the 1932 painting "Femme nue couch mich", which sold for $67.5 million at auction in 2022.

Picasso painted a Femme la montre' in an important year in his career. By the age of 50, he had reached widespread fame in 1932 and stepped up his ambition to silence critics who questioned "whether he was a past artist or future artist,"