As prices for modern art continues to skyrocket, Christie’s is hoping to keep re-writing the record books. The auction house said today that it is expecting to get a record price for Pablo Picasso’s Les femmes d’Alger (Version “O”) when it goes up for sale in May.
The piece, which is the final part of Picasso’s 1954-55 series of works inspired by Eugene Delacroix’s work, will go up for sale on May 11 as part of the “Looking Forward to the Past” auction in New York.
Christie’s is expecting the piece to go for at least $140 million. That would easily break the record for a Picasso work, which is still held by Nude, Green Leaves and Bust (1932), which Christie’s sold for $106.5 million in 2010.
It would also put it near the record set by Francis Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud as the most expensive painting to be sold at auction. In 2013, the piece sold for $142 million at Christie’s in New York.
“From the auctioneer’s rostrum it has become clear that the many new global collectors chasing masterpieces have been waiting for an iconic Picasso to appear on the market,” Jussi Pylkkanen, Christie’s Global President, said in a statement. “None is more iconic than Les femmes d'Alger. The sale on Monday 11 May promises to be a sale to remember.”
The piece has been on the auction block before. According to Bloomberg, in 1997, it was sold as part of the Victor and Sally Ganz collection for $31.9 million.
Art collectors have been rushing to auctions around the world as of late, with global sales of art reaching $54.1 billion in 2014.
image via Twitter from artinfodotcom