A work by Austrian painter Gustav Klimt has become the second most expensive artwork sold at auction after Tuesday evening (November 18).
The work, ‘Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer,’ was sold during a 20-minute bidding war among six different bidders for the total of $236.4 million (£179 million), surpassing the pre-auction estimate of $150 million.
The artwork was looted by the Nazis and narrowly escaped destruction in a fire during WWII, and was returned to the Lederer family (specifically Erich Lederer) in 1948 before being sold in 1983. The painting was part of the private collection of Estée Lauder heir Leonard A. Lauder since 1985.
Several other Klimt works from Lauder's collection, including landscapes, sold for between $60 million and $80 million each at the same event.
Here are the 13 most expensive works of art ever sold at auction—a stunning look into the world's billion-dollar art market, and who Klimt surpassed to achieve the feat.
9. Amedeo Modigliani - Nu couché (sur le côté gauche) ($157.2 Million)
As the largest painting Modigliani ever created and the only horizontal nude to contain the model's entire figure within the canvas, this monumental work represents the culmination of his revolutionary approach to the genre, which shocked viewers at his only solo show in 1917. The sale price highlights the market's consistent reverence for Modigliani’s erotic, elongated figures, which blend classical structure with modern psychological intensity. | HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images
10. Pablo Picasso - Les Femmes d’Alger ("Version O") ($179.4 Million)
The final and most celebrated canvas in a 15-part series spanning two months, this work stands as Picasso's reinterpretation of Eugène Delacroix's 1834 Orientalist masterpiece, combining Cubist fragmentation with vibrant colour and energy. This painting became the most expensive Picasso ever sold at the time, demonstrating the persistent appetite for the artist's large-scale, intensely worked paintings from the mid-1950s, a period of renewed creative vigour. | TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images
11. Andy Warhol - Shot Sage Blue Marilyn ($195.0 Million)
A definitive icon of Pop Art, this silkscreen portrait captures Marilyn Monroe using a revolutionary technique and belongs to the famous "Shot" series—named because a performance artist shot a bullet through the stack of canvases—representing the collision of celebrity, tragedy, and mass media. The high price reflects its undisputed status as a singular masterpiece of 20th-century art, transcending the art market to become a global symbol of American culture and iconography. | ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images
12. Gustav Klimt - Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer ($236.4 Million)
This striking portrait, which set a new record for modern art and became the most valuable work ever sold at Sotheby's, captures the daughter of Klimt’s major Jewish patrons amidst the artist’s most opulent and decorative Golden Period. The artwork carries a profound historical narrative, having been looted by the Nazis during WWII before its eventual restitution, making its monumental sale not just an artistic milestone but a powerful moment of cultural and historical reckoning. | Getty Images