A version of “The Scream” painting by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch was sold on Wednesday evening in New York for $119.92 million. It is an absolute record price, making the 1895 painting the artwork with the highest price ever sold at an auction, informs AFP. The auction, organized at Sotheby’s in New York, lasted only 12 minutes, and the amount at stake grew by over $10 million dollars a minute. Seven buyers have stubbornly fought for the artwork, estimated initially at $80 million.
Only eight works of art have exceeded, in the past, the threshold of $80 million at an auction and none of them reached $100 million in the actual auction. Munch’s painting is the only work that has managed this performance. The previous world record was owned by a Picasso painting, “Nude, green leaves and bust”, sold for $106.4 million in May 2010, at Christie’s in New York. The pastel painted by Munch in 1895, representing a man screaming with his hands around the face, with the Oslo bloody sky in the background, is the only one of four versions of the painting that was still owned by a private collector. The other three versions of the picture belong to Norwegian museums.
No detail was provided about the identity of the buyer, which was the subject of much speculation after the auction, but the seller, Norwegian businessman Petter Olsen said he was very pleased about the record price. Petter Olsen will use the money to build a new museum dedicated to the artist in Norway.
Sale of Munch’s work allowed Sotheby’s to beat their own record for a single evening auction of Impressionist and modern art, which was $286.2 million, dating from 1990. Wednesday evening, by selling 65 of the 76 items offered at auction, Sotheby’s reached the amount of $330.56 million.
Between 1893 and 1910, Edvard Munch, an expressionist painter (1863-1944), produced four versions of this picture, which have become, over the years, a true symbol of universal anxiety. The painting sold Wednesday night belonged to Olsen family for over 70 years. This painting has a peculiarity: it includes in red lettering on its wooden frame the poem that inspired this work, which became one of the most recognizable masterpieces in the world.
Simon Shaw, vice president and director of the Impressionist and Modern Art department of Sotheby’s, says that “The Scream” of Munch is only exceeded on a celebrity scale by Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” in terms of recognition of a popular culture image.
In his diary on February 22, 1892, Edvard Munch explains the inspiration for “The Scream”: ” I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature”.
Reply