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It's about portrait of an artistits auction breaks records and exceeds 90 million
Last Thursday, the well-known painting portrait of an artist by London artist David Hockney has become the most expensive work of art by a living artist ever sold. The sale took place at Christie's auction house in New York. and, as expected for months, it broke records when it sold for $ 90,312,500 (79,078,979 euros), the highest price paid for a work by a living artist. Hockney thus took over the position he held until then balloon dog by Jeff Koons, sold for $ 58.4 million in 2013.
Despite having remained in the hands of private collectors, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) is one of Hockney's most recognized works. The double portrait represents a young man located at the edge of the pool, looking at a swimmer who is submerged. The swimmer would be inspired by Peter Schlesinger, model and former lover of Hockney, with whom he broke off the relationship a year earlier.
Art: © David Hockney. Fsource: Jack Hazan/Buzzy Enterprises.
After initially abandoning the creation of this piece, a year later, in 1972, and on the occasion of an exhibition that the André Emmerich Gallery dedicated to him, he returned to it. For two weeks the painter worked 18 hours a day to finish this pictorial work, even giving the last brushstroke the night before the transporters went to collect the canvas for his exhibition in New York.
Hockney's painting was the protagonist of the Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale, an auction that included works by artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Roy Lichtenstein. The auction culminated in the sale of 85% of the pieces in the lot for a price total of 357,622,500 dollars (315,348,000 euros).
