Pablo Picasso’s 1919 work “Guitar on a Table,” held on loan at the New York Museum of Modern Art since 1990, sold at Sotheby’s Monday for $37.1 million.
The cubist painting was expected to sell for $20 million, according to the Wall Street Journal, before a two-person bidding war pushed the price higher. “Guitar on a Table” had never been auctioned in its history.
The painting had been bought by CBS founder William Paley in 1946, then bequeathed to the foundation bearing his name upon his death in 1990. The William S. Paley Foundation lent much of Paley’s art collection, including “Guitar on a Table,” to the Museum of Modern Art.
The foundation decided to sell off the collection at Sotheby’s to fund digital art programming at the museum. The sales Monday included the Picasso piece and four others for $47 million total, according to the New York Times.
“It is a testament to the visionary philanthropy of William S. Paley that the bequest he made through his foundation anticipated that, over time, the needs of the Museum would evolve in ways that could not have been foreseen or even imagined thirty years ago,” MoMA Director Glenn Lowry noted in a Sotheby’s page explaining the collection sale.
According to Sotheby’s, 21 works from Paley’s collection are being auctioned off this fall, with many pieces reaching auction for the first time in over 50 years. The sale of the collection will continue through April in London and New York.
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