Picasso’s £70m mistress masterpiece smashes art auction world record
A Picasso painting of one of his mistresses today sold for £70.3million ($106.5million) — a world record price for any artwork sold at auction. The 1932 Nude, Green Leaves And Bust, which had a pre-sale estimate of £46 million-£59million, was sold to an undisclosed telephone bidder at a Christie’s impressionist and modern art auction in New York. The sale — equivalent to £21,537 for each square inch of the artwork — surpassed the £65million paid for Giacometti’s L’Homme Qui Marche at Sotheby’s in February. The previous highest price for a Picasso was $104.2 million for Boy With A Pipe (The Young Apprentice) sold at Sotheby’s in New York in 2004. The painting, a large-scale depiction of Pablo Picasso’s mistress Marie-Thérèse…