The cubist had been in the private collection of CBS founder William S. Paley since 1946
Artist Pablo Picasso’s “Guitar on a Table” sold at an auction Monday for $37.1 million, moving the painting from its 30-year home at the New York Museum of Modern Art. (Sotheby’s)
Artist Pablo Picasso’s “Guitar on a Table” painting sold at an auction Monday for $37.1 million after spending 30 years at the New York Museum of Modern Art.
The cubist, which was sold at Sotheby’s, had been in the private collection of CBS founder William S. Paley since 1946.
The painting was lent to the Museum of Modern Art after Paley died in 1990.
Sotheby’s started selling off several masterpieces long lent to the Museum of Modern Art to fund an expansion of the museum’s digital footprint.
The yellow, pink and teal Picasso painting, which Paley purchased as a young collector, was expected to sell for at least $20 million. Two bidders competing for the painting increased its price even further before a telephone bidder won the artwork.
Other pieces from Paley’s estate up for auction on Monday included Joan Miró’s 1949 abstract “Painting,” which sold for $1.4 million. The figure exceeded its estimate of $700,000 to $1 million.
Sotheby’s helped a foundation for Paley sell his 1963 painting “Three Studies for Portrait of Henrietta Moraes” by Francis Bacon for $27 million last month in London.
Sales at Sotheby’s on Monday also included the estate of former Whitney Museum of American Art President David Solinger, which surpassed $138 million and was led by a swirling 1950 untitled collage by Dutch painter Willem de Kooning that sold for $33.6 million.
Another Picasso work, Solinger’s 1927 red-and-black view of a “Woman in an Armchair,” sold for $10 million, a figure that failed to reach its $15 million estimate.
The Wall Street Journal contributed to this report.