After a 14-minute bidding war, Claude Monet’s 1891 painting “Meule” sold for a record $81.4 million. “Meule” was among the offerings at Christie’s Impressionist and modern art auction held on Wednesday evening, which brought in a total of $246.3 million.
According to a Bloomberg report, Christie’s also set an auction record for Wassily Kandinsky whose 1935 abstract composition “Rigide et courbe” fetched $23.3 million.
Christie’s successful auction comes after dampened expectations for this week—Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips are targeting at least $1 billion in sales during this week’s auctions in New York, down 49 percent from a year ago.
Read the Bloomberg report here.