LONDON – (AFP) – René Magritte’s “Empire of Light”, a masterpiece of the twentieth century, sold for .4 59.4 million ($ 79.47 million) in London on Wednesday, setting a record for the work of a Belgian artist. Sold at auction.
Sotheby’s, the auction house, announced on Twitter that the “Empire of Light” had sold for .4 59.4 million, setting a new record for the work of surrealist master Renee McGregor at auction.
In 2018, Magritte’s “The Pleasure Principle” sold for $ 26.8 million at an auction in New York.
Sotheby’s estimates that “Empire of Light” will sell for more than $ 60 million. This painting is one of Macrit’s most famous works, and depicts a man standing in front of a sea with a green apple in front of the sea, with the paintings “Betrayal of Images” and “Son of Man”.
Anne-Marie Gillion Croyd, daughter of the Belgian collector Pierre Croyd, painted the “Empire of Light” by Magrid in 1961 for her girlfriend and museum. The painting has been with the family since that year.
The painting shows a house lighting up at night, while the blue cloudy sky indicates that the time is day.
The auction house said, “Strange combination of dark street at night
Under a blue sky is a model for McGrath’s dazzling surreal fantasy, in which two incompatible things combine to form a ‘false reality’.
Measuring 114.5 x 146 cm, the painting was on display in Rome, Paris, Vienna, Milan, Seoul, Edinburgh and San Francisco, and was housed in the Magrid Museum in Brussels from 2009 to 2020.
Sotheby’s describes this work as “the most cinematic of all Macriton’s works, without a doubt”, inspired by one of the scenes from the 1973 horror film The Exorcist.
The house explained that the painting was part of a collection of 17 oil paintings, which “represents Magritte’s sole attempt to create a ‘series’ of his works.”
The series quickly became known to the public and collectors through the first painting purchased by Nelson Rockefeller and now in the Becky Kugenheim Museum of Modern Art in Venice or in the Men’s Collection in Houston, Texas. Or at the Royal Belgian Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels.
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