ART NEWS – On Wednesday, Bloomberg’s Katya Kazakina revealed that Oprah Winfrey had parted with Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II (1912) for $150 million, in a private deal brokered by Larry Gagosian that sent the masterwork to a Chinese collector. The media titan had purchased the work at Christie’s in New York in November 2006 for $87.9 million, an auction record for the artist then and still now.
Now, another Klimt work is coming to the auction block, this time at Sotheby’s in London, and there’s a chance it could eclipse that record. Bauerngarten (1907) will lead the auction house’s Impressionist and modern art evening sale on March 1, with an on-request estimate that puts the work’s value in excess of $45 million. – read more