"Dora Maar with cat" on May 3 at Sotheby's.
$95.2 million on a Picasso portrait of Dora Maar. It became the second highest price ever paid for a work of art at auction, after "Boy With a Pipe" a 1905 painting from Picasso's Rose Period, which brought $104.1 million at Sotheby's in May 2004. The buyer, unrecognized by the crowds who kept craning their necks to get a glimpse of him bidding, was said by those who sat near him to sound Russian. Refusing to identify himself, he was escorted out a side door by a Sotheby's staff member after the sale to avoid the throngs of television cameras and reporters.
May 4, 2006
