Chinese former taxi driver buys $170.4m Modigliani

Amedeo Modigliani’s 1917 “Nu Couche (Reclining Nude)” stretched to an artist record price of $170 million (with fees), the second highest price ever paid at auction for an artwork (Picasso leads at $179 million).

When Modigliani first exhibited the piece in Paris in 1917, the police shut down the exhibition because they were “outraged by the content of the show”, according to Christie’s.

The Christie’s auction sale of Modigliani’s painting, Nu Couché (aka Reclining Nude), is interesting for both his story and that of the buyer, Liu Yigian and his wife, Wang Wei, of China. It depicts an unknown nude model reclining on a crimson couch and blue cushion.

The modernist masterpiece also eclipsed the previous auction record for the artist by nearly $100 million.

The evening tallied $491.4-M, setting 5 auction records for artists including Gustave Courbet and Roy Lichtenstein, whose painting of a nurse sold for $95.4-M.

With the sale, Modigliani becomes just the sixth artist to enter the so-called $100 Million-at-Auction Club – its members include Picasso, Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon, Alberto Giacometti and Edvard Munch, whose well-known 1895 pastel “The Scream” sold for $120 million at a Sotheby’s NY auction in 2012.

The giant oil painting called “The Brigadier” smashed its pre-sale estimate of $30m. Picasso still holds the record price for paintings at auction.

“Lady Abdy” by Balthus brought another auction record for the artist at $9.9 million.

Another artist record was broken for a Gauguin sculpture, when “Thérèse” sold for just under $31 million, beating the $25 million estimate.

Referencing the sale’s unsold lots, Pylkkanen said that was the risk of “pushing the envelope” and pointed out that a few works were either not fresh to the market, or were perhaps aggressively priced.

A Lucian Freud portrait of the ex-husband of Britain’s Duchess of Cornwall, Andrew Parker Bowles, sold for $34.89m in NY on Tuesday, Christie’s said.

The Times reports that the next highest price paid for a Modigliani is the $70.7 million paid for his sculpture, “Tete”, a year ago.

Modigliani’s result was not large, Artnet noted: he died of tuberculosis at age 35, in 1920, having finished only 350 paintings in a career that was mostly unsuccessful. It had last sold at Phillips NY in May 2013 for $38.2 million.

“To me, art collecting is primarily a process of learning about art”, Mr Liu said in an interview with The NY Times in 2013.