A Rene Magritte painting broke the auction record for the surrealist artist on Tuesday, selling for more than $121 million at Christie’s in New York.
The seminal 1954 painting fetched $95 million, and the previous record for a work by Magritte (1898-1967) was $79 million, set in 2022.
After a nearly 10-minute bidding war on Tuesday, “Empire of Light” (“L’Empire des lumieres”) sold for $121,160,000, “a world record price for the artist and a realist work of art at auction.” According to auction house Christie’s.
The painting – depicting a house at night, illuminated by a lamp post, under a bright, blue sky – is one of a series by the Belgian artist that shows the interplay of shadow and light. has gone
“Empire of Light” was part of the private collection of Mica Ertegan, an interior designer who fled communist Romania and settled in the United States, where she became an influential figure in the art world.
She died in late 2023 and was married to the late Ahmed Ertegun, the music magnate who founded the Atlantic Records label.
The sale of a Magritte painting was an expected highlight of the fall sales season in New York this week, at a time when the art market has seen a slowdown over the past year.
Christie’s – which is controlled by Artemis, the investment company owned by the Pinault family – said sales totaled $2.1 billion in the first half of this year.
After a peak of $4.1 billion in 2022 when the world emerged from the coronavirus pandemic, it is down for the second year in a row.
During the same auction at Christie’s on Tuesday, 86-year-old Ed Ruscha’s famous 1964 painting of a gas station, titled “Standard Station, Tenth St. Western Bang Tavern in Half,” sold for $68.26 million, which topped the auction. Set a new record. For the American pop artist.
