Gustav Klimt - Adele Bloch-Bauer II 1912
Adele Bloch-Bauer II 1912
190x120cm oil/canvas
Sold for: USD 150.0 million
Auction house: Private sale via Larry Gagosian
Sale date: summer of 2016
Seller: Oprah Winfrey
Buyer: Unidentified buyer in China
From The Museum of Modern Art New York:
Adele Bloch-Bauer was the wife of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a wealthy industrialist in Vienna, where Klimt lived and worked. Completed in 1912, the composition emphasizes Bloch-Bauer’s social station within Vienna’s cultural elite. Her towering figure, in opulent dress, is set against a jewel-toned backdrop of nearly abstract patterned blocks that suggest a richly decorated domestic interior. In 1938, the Nazis took possession of this portrait along with other works of art in the Bloch-Bauer family’s collection (including Adele Bloch-Bauer I, now in the collection of the Neue Galerie, New York). In 2006, after years of legal negotiations, the works were returned to the Bloch-Bauer heirs and subsequently sold to other collections.