A Gustav Klimt portrait painting that helped save the life of its Jewish subject during the Holocaust has sold for $236.4 million (€204m), breaking a record for a modern art piece which was previously held by an Andy Warhol portrait of Marilyn Monroe – which sold for $195 million (€168m) in 2022.
Klimt’s “Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer” (Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer) sold after a 20-minute bidding war at Sotheby’s in New York. Sotheby’s declined to share the identity of the portrait’s buyer.
The 1.8-meter-tall portrait, painted over three years between 1914 and 1916, depicts the daughter of one of Vienna’s wealthiest families. It 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, where the painting was previously on loan.
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. 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.
The painting is one of two full-length portraits by the Austrian artist that remain privately owned. The work was kept separate from other Klimt paintings that burned in a fire at an Austrian castle.
It was part of the collection of billionaire Leonard A. Lauder, heir to cosmetics giant The Estée Lauder Companies. He died this year at 92, leaving behind an impressive collection worth more than $400 million.
According to Sotheby’s, five Klimt pieces from Lauder’s collection sold at the auction for a total of $392 million (€338m).