1 of 2. Sotheby's employees straighten ''Femme assise pres d'une fenetre'' from 1932 by Pablo Picasso at Sotheby's in London January 31, 2013.

LONDON | Tue Feb 5, 2013 7:44pm EST

LONDON (Reuters) - A Pablo Picasso portrait of his mistress and "golden muse" Marie-Therese Walter sold for 28.6 million pounds ($45 million) on Tuesday, leading an important Sotheby's auction of impressionist, modern and surrealist art.

The sale was the first of a series held in London this month by Sotheby's, Christie's and smaller auction houses in the latest barometer of the strength of the high-end art market.

Prices for the most sought-after works have soared in recent years despite broader economic concerns, with collectors in China, Russia and the Middle East joining more established patrons in Europe and the United States.

Subtracting the buyer's premium of more than 10 percent, the amount realized for the 1932 Picasso was at the lower end of pre-sale estimates of 25 million-35 million pounds.

Nonetheless, it was comfortably the top lot of an evening when a series of works on paper by Austrian artist Egon Schiele arguably stole the limelight.

Schiele's 1914 "Lovers (Self Portrait With Wally)" fetched 7.9 million pounds, an auction record for the artist for a work on paper.

Also sold by the Leopold Museum in Vienna was his "Self Portrait in Green Shirt with Eyes Closed" which sold for 5.1 million pounds, well above expectations of between 1.8 million and 2.5 million pounds.

The combined tally for Schiele works, sold by the museum to help settle a long-running restitution case involving art deemed to have been stolen by the Nazis in the 1930s, was 14 million pounds.

Other lots fared less well, notably Max Beckmann's "Before the Ball - Two Women With a Cat" which went unsold despite pre-sale estimates of 5 million-8 million pounds.

Overall the evening brought in 121.1 million pounds in sales, within expectations of 103 million-149 million. Sotheby's said it was their second highest total from an equivalent sale in London.

"Bidders, both new to the market as well as seasoned buyers, reacted with great enthusiasm, in particular to the selection of impressionist works that were considered to be the strongest offering in many years," said Helena Newman, chair of Sotheby's impressionist and modern art in Europe.

Christie's, the world's largest auction house, holds its sale in London on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Christopher Wilson)

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Pablo Picasso's ''The Charnel House'' Paris 1944-45; dated 1945, an oil and charcoal on canvas is seen in this undated handout photo released to Reuters on October 4, 2012.

NEW YORK | Thu Oct 4, 2012 5:53pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Pablo Picasso may be best known for his Blue and Rose Periods and Cubism but the Spanish artist also used black and white in his works, many of which will be shown in a new exhibition opening on Friday at New York's Guggenheim Museum.

"Picasso Black and White," which runs through January 23 and includes 118 paintings, sculptures and works on paper from 1904 to 1971, focuses on Picasso's exploration of the use of the two colors.

"This is the first exhibition that examines his continuous use of the black and white palette throughout his career, therefore we think it is a ground-breaking exhibition," said Richard Armstrong, the director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation.

"We think this offers new insights into his creative character," he added.

From "La Repasseuse" a stark, somber 1904 oil on canvas painting of an angular woman ironing to "The Kiss," a work in dark gray and black that was completed decades later, the exhibition runs in chronological order up the curving ramps of the museum.

It includes works that have never been seen in public before and more than 30 will be on view in the United States for the first time.

Carmen Gimenez, the curator of the exhibition, said the minimal use of color in Picasso's works in the exhibition showed his focus on line, form, drawings and tones, which is evident in "The Kitchen," a 1948 painting of angles, circles, curves, and varying shades of gray.

"His interest in on drawing and on the line," she explained in an interview.

Even in his Blue and Rose periods, Gimenez said black, white and gray is a recurrent motif. The lack of color, she added, enabled Picasso to manage complicated paintings such as his black and white masterpiece "The Milliner's Workshop," which is on loan for the exhibition from the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

"The Charnel House," a jumble of corpses with a primitive quality, which was reportedly inspired by newspaper photographs of war, is another major work in the show, along with "The Maids of Honor," the largest of his 44 variations of Diego Velazquez's "Las Meninas" which Picasso painted in California.

"Black and white tended to be used in ambitious and complicated compositions," Gimenez explained.

She added that Picasso's monochromatic tones are rooted in Paleolithic cave drawings and were used to explore the works of other great Spanish artists such as Velazques, El Greco and Francisco de Goya, who also used black and gray.

"Gray was an essential part of the classical tradition," she said.

"Head of a Horse, Sketch for Guernica" is another work of art featured in the show. It is a study for arguably Picasso's most famous painting "Guernica," his reaction to the massive air raid by the Germans in 1937 on the Basque town of Guernica.

After its run at the Guggenheim, the show will move to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.

(Reporting by Patricia Reaney; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

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Pablo Picasso's ''Nature morte aux tulipes'', an oil on canvas painted in March 1932 is seen in this handout photo.

NEW YORK | Fri Oct 5, 2012 4:20pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A 1932 portrait by Pablo Picasso of his young lover and a pioneering 3-D Andy Warhol painting of the Statue of Liberty are expected to sell for at least $35 million each, but could fetch much more when they are auctioned next month.

The two works, Picasso's "Nature morte aux tulipes," and Warhol's "Statue of Liberty" will be the highlights of New York autumn sales at Sotheby's and Christie's.

The Picasso masterpiece is one of several renderings of his muse Marie-Thérèse Walter and considered by art experts to be one of his most important works. It carries a pre-sale estimate from $35 million to up to $50 million ahead of the November 5 sale at Sotheby's.

"The young woman, with her Grecian profile and athletic, statuesque frame, inspired Picasso's greatest achievements in a variety of media," said Simon Shaw, Sotheby's Impressionist and Modern Art department in New York.

"Nature morte aux tulipes is exceptional within the series for its double-meditation on this subject, demonstrating the influence of Surrealism on his output: the artist builds a sculpture of Marie-Thérèse, and then paints that sculpture as a sexually-charged still life, allowing him to dissect her form on many levels," he added in a statement.

Marie-Thérèse, who was just 17 years old when she met the already married Picasso, featured in many of his works and bore him a daughter in 1935.

Another painting of her, "Femme à la fenêtre" from 1936, will also be included in the Sotheby sale with a pre-sale estimate of up to $20 million.

"Nu au Plateau de Sculpteur" a 1932 painting of Marie-Thérèse was sold to anonymous buyer at a 2010 auction for $106.5 million.

The sale of the Picasso portraits coincides with a new exhibition of the works of the renowned Spanish artist at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

ICON OF THE AMERICAN DREAM

The following week, on November 14, Warhol's "Statue of Liberty," will go under the hammer at Christie's. It is the first of its kind in 3-D and the only example of the artist's experimentation with the technique still privately owned.

A child of immigrants, Warhol painted the red and green work showing multiple misaligned images of the iconic landmark in 1962 as a prelude to his Death and Disaster series, according to Christie's.

"Andy Warhol's 'Statue of Liberty' is one of the most important statements on America and on painting in the 1960s," said Brett Gorvy, the chairman and international head of Post-War and Contemporary Art.

"It is a famous icon of the American dream, alongside Warhol's most popular American subjects such as the Coca-Cola bottle, the Campbell's soup-cans and his Marilyns and Elvis."

Two other paintings from the 3-D series are part of museum collections in Switzerland and Pittsburgh.

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts announced last month that it would sell paintings, photos and other works by the pop artist in a series of auctions, private sales and online. Proceeds from the sales will be used to help the foundation expand its support of the visual arts.

(Reporting by Patricia Reaney; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

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