Gustav Klimt has set a new benchmark at Sotheby’s inaugural evening at its Breuer Building headquarters, where his Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer sold for a record-breaking $236.4 million (£179.7m, A$364m) with fees—making it the second most expensive artwork ever sold at auction and the most valuable work of modern art ever to appear under the hammer. The sale anchored a historic opening night that achieved the highest single-evening total in Sotheby’s history: an extraordinary $706 million across the once-in-a-generation Leonard A. Lauder Collection and the Now & Contemporary Evening Sale (combined estimate: $522.8–680.7 million), capping a week that drew more than 25,000 visitors and queues stretching around the block.
At the centre of the momentum was Klimt’s towering portrait—one of the rarest and most admired works from the artist’s pinnacle years (1912–17)—which ignited a twenty-minute bidding crescendo involving six collectors before selling via Julian Dawes, Sotheby’s Vice Chairman and Head of Impressionist & Modern Art.
From there, the energy flowed seamlessly into the Now & Contemporary Auction, led by **Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Crowns (Peso Neto) ** at $48.3 million, with the final bid executed by Jen Hua, Deputy Chairman of Sotheby’s Asia & Chairman of Sotheby’s China. Maurizio Cattelan’s notorious America, a fully functioning 18-karat gold lavatory, achieved $12.1 million, marking the artist’s second-highest auction price after being acquired by a major American brand via Cassandra Hatton, Vice Chairman of Science and Natural History.
Last Night’s “white glove” triumph for the Lauder Collection and the charged pace of the Now & Contemporary sale mark a defining debut for Sotheby’s at the Breuer. The momentum continues on Thursday with two exceptional single-owner sales—The Cindy and Jay Pritzker Collection and Exquisite Corpus—alongside the Modern Evening Auction.
