February 15, 2012
LONDON (AFP) - A provocative masterpiece by Irish painter Francis Bacon on Tuesday fetched 21.3 million pounds (25.4 million euros) at a London auction while a Gerhard Richter abstract netted almost 10 million pounds.
Bacon's 1963 work "Portrait of Henrietta Moraes", which features a naked model sprawled on a bed, was snapped up by an unnamed telephone bidder at Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art auction, which realised 80.6 million pounds in total.
The Bacon auction record is $86.3 million for his 1976 "Triptych" which was achieved at Sotheby's New York in May 2008.
The painting sold on Tuesday was described in the catalogue as "the most seductive painting of a female figure ever realised by Francis Bacon". Bacon died in 1992 and is now regarded as one of the 20th century's most important artists.
German visual artist Richter's large 1994 green, blue and pink "Abstraktes Bild" sold for 9.9 million pounds, following on from the $20.8 paid for one of his abstracts at a New York sale last November.
