A Gustav Klimt portrait portray bought Tuesday for $236 million, a report for a contemporary artwork piece, at an public sale the place a stable gold, absolutely useful rest room satirizing the ultrarich additionally fetched $12.1 million.
The bathroom, by Maurizio Cattelan — the provocative Italian artist recognized for taping a banana to a wall — went up for public sale Tuesday night at Sotheby’s in New York. The beginning bid for the 223-pound, 18-karat-gold work was about $10 million.
Cattelan has stated the piece, titled “America,” satirizes superwealth.
“Whatever you eat, a $200 lunch or a $2 hot dog, the results are the same, toilet-wise,” he as soon as stated. Sotheby’s, for its half, calls the commode an “incisive commentary on the collision of artistic production and commodity value.”
This picture offered by Sotheby’s exhibits Gustav Klimt’s “Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer” (Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer), which bought for $236.4 million at public sale Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025, in New York.
Sotheby’s through AP
Klimt’s “Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer” bought earlier within the night time after a 20-minute bidding struggle, additionally turning into the costliest murals ever bought by Sotheby’s worldwide. The piece attracted bids from not less than six collectors earlier than lastly promoting.
The portrait was one of many few by the Austrian artist that survived World Warfare II intact. It depicts the younger daughter of one in every of Klimt’s patrons and was saved separate from his different work that had been burned in a hearth at an Austrian fort.
The piece was a part of the gathering of billionaire Leonard A. Lauder, inheritor to cosmetics big The Estée Lauder Firms. He died earlier this 12 months.
In 2024, a portrait of a younger lady by Klimt that was lengthy believed to be misplaced was bought at an public sale in Vienna for $32 million. The portray, “Portrait of Fräulein Lieser,” was one in every of Klimt’s final items of labor earlier than he died in 1918.
Klimt labored primarily in Vienna within the early 1900s and he could also be finest recognized for “The Kiss.”
This Sept. 16, 2016 file picture constructed from a video exhibits the 18-karat rest room, titled “America,” by Maurizio Cattelan within the restroom of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.
AP file picture
The bathroom, which had been owned by an unnamed collector, was one in every of two that Cattelan created in 2016. The opposite one was displayed in 2016 at New York’s Guggenheim Museum, which pointedly supplied to lend it to President Trump when he requested to borrow a Van Gogh portray. Then the piece was stolen whereas on show in England at Blenheim Palace, the nation manor the place Winston Churchill was born.
Two males had been convicted in the bathroom heist, nevertheless it’s unclear what they did with the toilet. Investigators aren’t aware of its whereabouts however imagine it in all probability was damaged up and melted down.
“America” was exhibited at Sotheby’s New York headquarters within the weeks main as much as the public sale.
Extra from CBS Information
