Five bidders drove the price of a nude painting up to a whopping $170,405,000 at Christie’s Auction House in London yesterday.
The bid for the one hundred year old painting by Amedeo Modigliani entitled “Reclining Nude” lasted all of nine minutes. This nine figure deal is the second highest price that a painting has sold at an auction. Christie’s had only hoped that the controversial image would yield at least $100 million.
When Modigliani first exhibited the piece in Paris in 1917, the police shut down the exhibition because they were “outraged by the content of the show,” according to Christie’s.
Roy Lichtenstein’s graffiti-esque pop art “Nurse” painting sold Monday for $95,365,000, which is an auctio nrecord for Lichtenstein.
The winning bidder of both pieces remain anonymous.
