A Gustav Klimt portrait painting that helped save the life of its Jewish subject during the Holocaust sold Tuesday for $236.4 million, a record for a modern art piece.
Klimt's “Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer” sold after a 20-minute bidding war at Sotheby’s in New York. The 6-foot-tall (1.8-meter-tall) portrait, painted over three years between 1914 and 1916, depicts the daughter of one of Vienna's wealthiest families adorned in an East Asian emperor’s cloak. It is one of two full-length portraits by the Austrian artist that remain privately owned.
How the painting saved Elisabeth Lederer
The colorful painting depicts the Lederer family's life of luxury before Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938. Nazis looted the Lederer art collection, leaving only the family portraits, which were considered “too Jewish” to be worth stealing, according to the National Gallery of Canada.
In an attempt to save herself, Elisabeth Lederer made up a story that Klimt, who was not Jewish and died in 1918, was her father. It helped that the artist spent years working meticulously on her portrait. With help from her former brother-in-law, a high-ranking Nazi official, she convinced the Nazis to give her a document stating that she descended from Klimt. That allowed her to remain safely in Vienna until she died of an illness in 1944.
Lauder collection shines, Golden Toilet sells for $12.1 Million
The portrait was part of the collection of billionaire Leonard A. Lauder, heir to cosmetics giant The Estée Lauder Companies. He died this year at 92. Five Klimt pieces from Lauder's collection sold at the auction for a total of $392 million.
Later in the evening, an 18-karat-gold toilet by Maurizio Cattelan — titled “America” — hit the auction block for $12.1 million. “Whatever you eat, a $200 lunch or a $2 hot dog, the results are the same, toilet-wise,” he once said.
Sotheby’s called the commode an “incisive commentary on the collision of artistic production and commodity value.”
