Picasso Sells for Record $106.5M

A Pablo Picasso portrait of his mistress sold for a record-breaking $106.5 million at a Christie's auction in New York yesterday. The winning bid, placed by an anonymous telephone bidder, is the highest price ever paid for a work of art at auction, beating the $104.5 million forked out for a Giacometti sculpture earlier this year, the New York Times reports.

Picasso painted Nude, Green Leaves, and Bust in a single day in 1932. It shows mistress and muse Marie-Therese Walter reclining and as a bust, with the painter's profile in the background. The work came from the collection of Los Angeles philanthrophists Frances and Sidney Brody. It had been in the Brody family home since the couple bought the painting in the '50s.
(More painting stories.)