Modigliani’s act of naked women’s is worth $150 million and is estimated to be the most expensive image ever offered at auction.
According to Sotheby’s auction house, the painting “Nu couche (sur le cote gauche),” or “Reclining nude,” is considered the most valuable Modigliani’s painting from 1917.
Simon Shaw, the co-head of Sotheby’s impressionist and modern art department, said the work was radically innovative and had an important place in art history. “This painting reimagines the nude for the modern era,” he said.
Nu couche
Modigliani shocked the society at that time with his paintings showing the natural female body with their hair.
The painting is one of 22 reclining nudes completed by Modigliani, many of them exhibited at a scandalising exhibition in Paris in 1917. “Together these pictures signal a watershed in perhaps the greatest tradition in art,” said Shaw. “There is nude before Modigliani, and there is nude after Modigliani.”
The auction will start in New York on May 14th.
Nu couche
