Although the buyer's name has not yet been disclosed, it is known that six bidders participated in the auction, actively competing for the painting for 20 minutes. Sotheby's noted that this work has become the most expensive in the history of contemporary art sold at auction.
Photo: Nancy Kaszerman / ZUMA Press Wire / Scanpix / LETA.
This painting previously belonged to collector Leonard Lauder, who was the heir to Estée Lauder. It was located in his home on Fifth Avenue in New York. Lauder passed away in June 2025 at the age of 92. That evening, five works by Klimt from his collection were sold at auction, bringing in a total of $392 million.
Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer.
The portrait, painted between 1914 and 1916, depicts 20-year-old Elisabeth Lederer, who was the daughter of an Austrian industrialist and a patron of Klimt. After the artist's death in 1918, the painting became part of a collection owned by a wealthy Jewish family in Vienna. During World War II, the Nazis confiscated the collection, and many works were lost in a fire, but the portrait of Elisabeth survived and returned to her brother Erich in 1948. In 1983, Erich sold the portrait to an art dealer, and two years later it entered Leonard Lauder's collection.
