20/11/2025
Gustav Klimt's portrait becomes the world's highest-selling work of modern art
On Tuesday, iconic Art Nouveau/Secession painter Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Elizabeth Lederer (1914-1916) (1) became the world's second most expensive work of art ever sold at auction, behind Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi ($460m, 2017).
Estimated at 150 million dollars, the painting went for $336,4m (€292,1m) at Sotheby's, in New York, to an unknown buyer, thus becoming the world's highest-selling piece of modern art at auction.
Klimt's Lady with a Fan (1917-1918) (2) already broke records in 2023 by becoming, at $108m, the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction in Europe.
The portrait represents the 20 year-old daughter of one of Klimt's main patrons, the wealthy Vienna (Jewish) industrialist August Lederer. Dressed in fashionable and intricately decorated attire covered with Chinese and East Asian symbols. Elizabeth is shown like a butterfly metamorphosing from a chrysalis. Klimt, it is said, was never satisfied nor convinced the portrait was actually finished. The thousands of ornamental details are also reminiscent of micro-organisms seen through a microscope, which is known to have fascinated the artist.
In 1939 the canvas, along with the whole Lederer Collection, was looted by the N***s and almost burnt (many other Klimts did!). Elizabeth Lederer survived the holocaust by falsely claiming, with the help of her mother, that she was Klimt's biological child, of which he is said to have had 14!
Since restitution, the piece has been held in private collections and has hardly been on public view. The masterpiece is one of Klimt's only full-length portraits.
The sale happens just as Helsinki's Ateneum is hosting its major exhibition Gallen-Kallela, Klimt and Vienna which showcases many works by the Vienna Secession, and where you can admire Klimt's Portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl (1916-1918) (3) which was left unfinished due to the First World War and the artist's death in 1918.
You can read more about the exhibition on my blog on www.telltalecities.com.
