The painting “The Empire of Enlightenment” by painter René Magritte was sold for $121 million in New York. The work thus became one of the most expensive paintings in auction history.
Time is money. And at Christie’s in New York, it was better to hurry to acquire the painting “The Empire of Lights” by the famous René Magritte, since the painting was sold for 121 million dollars (115 million euros), establishing thus a record for one of the masters of surrealism.
Awarded after 10 minutes of battle
After about ten minutes of fierce struggle between big wallets at Rockefeller Center, the work “The Empire of Enlightenment” was sold for exactly $121,160,000, commissions and fees included, at Christie’s in New York. A record sum for a work of surrealism, an artistic movement which is celebrating its centenary this year and which has seen the emergence of painters like Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp or Frida Kahlo.The painting “The Empire of Lights” and its fifty shades of blue is part of a series of paintings by the Belgian painter born in 1898, symbolizing the play of light and shadow that he loved. The work paradoxically represents a house at night, only lit by a street lamp, under a blue daytime sky. A painting that inspired the American director William Friedkin for the famous horror film “The Exorcist”. It was part of the private collection of Mica Ertegun, an interior designer who fled communist Romania to settle in the United States, where she became an influential figure in the arts world.
Magritte joins the very closed circle of painters with more than 100 million
The previous record for a work by the Belgian painter sold at auction stood at $79 million in 2022, again for a painting from the “Empire of Lights” series. The recent sale of the painting at Christie’s therefore brings René Magritte into the very closed circle of painters whose certain works have been sold for more than 100 million dollars, again for the American auction house.Three painters top the ranking, with Picasso’s painting “The Women of Algiers” on the third step of the podium, which was sold for $179.4 million to the former Prime Minister of Qatar. Second place goes to pop-art icon Andy Warhol and his “Shot Sage Blue Marilyn” with bright, saturated colors on a blue background, sold for $195 million. And the work holding the record for the most expensive painting in the world is that attributed to Leonardo da Vinci “Salvator Mundi”, depicting Jesus holding a glowing orb, sold for $450.3 million to Saudi Prince Badr bin Abdullah.
To survive under the Occupation, René Magritte painted and sold numerous fake paintings by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Giorgio De Chirico.
