A Jackson Pollock painting has sold for a record $181.2 million (£135.3 million) at Christie's in New York, making it the fourth most expensive work ever sold at auction, according to ARTnews. The sale on Monday saw Number 7A, 1948 shatter the previous auction record for a Pollock piece, which stood at $61.2 million set in 2021. Other works by the abstract expressionist have privately fetched up to $200 million.
Art Market Milestone
Christie's hailed the painting as a breakthrough in art history, stating: "It is with this work that Pollock finally frees himself from the shackles of conventional easel painting and produces one of the first truly abstract paintings in the history of art." The auction house also sold several other notable works on a busy day, including Constantin Brancusi's bronze sculpture Danaide for $107.6 million, surpassing its previous record of $71.2 million from 2018.
Other Notable Sales
Mark Rothko's No 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe) achieved $98.4 million, while Joan Miro's Portrait of Madame K sold for $53.5 million. Both figures exceeded the artists' previous auction records set in 2012: $86.9 million for Rothko and $37 million for Miro.
Recent Auction Trends
Monday's auction followed a series of record-breaking sales at Sotheby's in November last year. Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914-1916) sold for $236.4 million, becoming the second most expensive artwork ever auctioned. Frida Kahlo's self-portrait The Dream (The Bed) (1940) fetched $54.7 million, a record for a painting by a female artist. The most expensive painting ever sold at auction remains Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi, which was purchased for $450 million in 2017.
