Picasso artworks auctioned for combined $109M in Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS – Eleven Pablo Picasso artworks person been sold for a combined $109 cardinal successful a Las Vegas auction coinciding with the artist’s 140th birthday.

The 9 paintings and 2 ceramic pieces had been displayed wrong the Picasso edifice astatine the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art for much than 2 decades until proprietor MGM Resorts decided earlier this twelvemonth to merchantability them.

The Saturday lawsuit was organized by Sotheby’s and marked the archetypal clip the famed auction location staged an evening marquee merchantability successful North America extracurricular its New York saleroom. It featured Picasso artworks from 1917 to 1969.

Auction officials said Picasso’s 1938 representation of his muse Marie-Thérèse Walter entitled “Femme au béret rouge-orange” (“Woman successful a reddish-orange hat”) sold for $40.5 cardinal aft a bidding battle, good supra estimates of $20 cardinal to $30 million.

The coating past sold astatine auction successful the 1980s for astir $900,000 and was acquired by casino mogul Steve Wynn successful 1998 and became MGM Resorts’ spot erstwhile the institution purchased The Mirage edifice from Wynn.

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The Picasso auction besides featured 2 Cubist-inspired inactive beingness paintings from the aboriginal 1940s during World War II with “Nature morte au panier de fruits et aux fleurs” selling for $16.6 cardinal and “Nature morte aux fleurs et au compotier” going for $8.3 million.

“Homme et enfant,” a 1959 enactment that is astir 2 meters tall, sold for $24.4 million.

Picasso lived from 1881 until 1973 and spent overmuch of his big beingness successful France.

Over the people of much than 70 years arsenic a moving artist, Picasso is said to person created much than 13,000 paintings.

Organizers said the auction lasted astir 45 minutes and drew astir 150 people, with immoderate seated successful gold-framed chairs.

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