(Bloomberg) — Pablo Picasso’s “Les Femmes d’Alger (Version ‘‘O’’)” is going under the hammer in New York with a $140 million valuation, one of the highest presale target of any artwork offered at auction.
Christie’s will offer the vibrant 1955 oil-on-canvas during a special sale, “Looking Forward to the Past,” on May 11, the auction house said in a statement. It last appeared on the block in 1997 as part of the famous collection of Victor and Sally Ganz, and sold for $31.9 million.
Depicting a group of courtesans, the painting is based on Eugene Delacroix’s work of a similar title. Picasso explored the theme through a group of 15 paintings, designating the versions from A to O.
The final version “is the culmination of the series,” Brett Gorvy, Christie’s chairman and international head of postwar and contemporary art, said in a phone interview. “It’s the most extraordinary picture.”
The Ganzes were the original owners of Picasso’s complete “Les Femmes d’Alger” 15-painting series, according to Christie’s. They bought the group in 1956 directly from Picasso’s dealer Daniel Kahnweiler, paying $212,500.
The Ganz collection fetched $206.5 million at Christie’s after the couple’s deaths, setting an auction record for any single-owner collection at the time, according to the auction house.
