A work by the late British painter Francis Bacon set a new word record for the most expensive painting ever auctioned off, when it sold Tuesday at Christie’s Auction House in Manhattan for a staggering $142.4 million.
The artist’s iconic 1969 triptych “Three Studies of Lucien Freud” reached the record-breaking price after six minutes of fierce bidding at the Post War and Contemporary Art Sale.
The sale shattered the old record of $119 million, which was set by Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” which sold at Sotheby’s last year.
“This is the most important painting to come to auction for a generation,” Christie’s postwar-art director Francis Outred said.
“It’s not just one of Bacon’s greatest triptychs. It’s also a very careful study of one of his best friends and a painter who would come to rival him as one of the greatest figurative painters of the 20th century.”
Bacon’s three-part work is an image of fellow painter Lucien Freud — grandson of Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud — sitting on a wooden chair in different positions.
The six-foot-high piece was separated for a time until a collector in Rome spent 20 years bringing the masterpiece back together by tracking down sections in Paris and Japan.
Oddly enough, there is another full-length triptych Bacon painted of Freud in 1966. But that one has gone missing, making the “Three Studies” piece even more valuable.
Another record was set at Christie’s Tuesday when Jeff Koons’ “Balloon Dog” brought in the highest auction price for a living artist. The 10-foot-tall stainless steel structure, which resembles a twisted party balloon, sold for $58.4 million.