Painting Used To Save Woman From Nazis Sold For $236M At UES Auction, Report Says

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A Gustav Klimt painting with a remarkable history sold for a stunning $236,400,000 at Sotheby’s on the Upper East Side on Tuesday, setting a new record for a modern artwork, according to the Associated Press.

The nearly 6-foot-tall "Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer" drew a 20-minute bidding war Tuesday, the AP reported, at Sotheby's new auction house in the Breuer Building on Madison Avenue.

The sale smashes a record set in 2022, when Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe painting sold for $195,000,000.

When Nazi's looted the Lederer family's art collection during the Holocaust, they left family portraits which they deemed too Jewish to be worth stealing, including the Klimt piece of Lederer, the AP reported.

In order to save herself from the Nazis, the painting's subject made up a story that Klimt, who was not Jewish and died in 1918, was her father. The painting of her helped corroborate her story, as did forged papers that she had drawn up, according to the AP.

The identity of the buyer of the painting has not been shared, according to Sotheby's.

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