Most expensive 20th-century painting sold at auction

The most expensive painting from the 20th century sold at auction is Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914–16) by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, which achieved $236,400,000 (£179.6 m; €203.8 m) – including premium/fees – at Sotheby’s in New York City, USA, on 18 November 2025.

Prior to auction fees, the hammer price for Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer was $205 m (£155.7 m; €176.7 m). Its original auction estimate had been $150 m.

It smashes the previous auction record for a Klimt painting: Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a Fan, 1917), which realized £85.3 m ($108.4 m, €99.2 m) at Sotheby’s in London, UK, on 27 June 2023. It also becomes the second-most expensive painting ever sold at auction, only topped by Salvator Mundi (c. 1499–1510) by Leonardo da Vinci, which sold for $450,312,500 (£343 m; €383.9 m), including buyer’s premium, at Christie’s in New York City, USA, on 15 November 2017.

This surpasses the previous record price for a 20th-century painting of $195 m (£158.2 m; €184.6 m) realized by Andy Warhol’s Shot Sage Blue Marilyn (1964), which was auctioned at Christie’s in New York City, USA, on 9 May 2022. Prior to that, the record stood with Pablo Picasso’s The Women of Algiers (Version “O”) (1955), which sold for $179,365,000 (£116 m; €160 m), also at Christie’s in New York, on 11 May 2015.

In private sales, where verifiable figures are as you'd expect more scarce, it’s believed that the most expensive 20th-century painting could be Interchanged (1955), aka Interchange, by Willem de Kooning (USA, b. Netherlands), which reportedly sold for $300 m (£197.8 m) in September 2015. David Geffen Foundation sold Interchanged to billionaire hedge-fund manager Kenneth Griffin. At the same sale, Griffin bought another significant Abstract Expressionist work: Jackson Pollock’s Number 17A (1948). The total sale price for the pair was reportedly $500 m, also making the Pollock work one of the most expensive paintings ever sold at $200 m (£131.3 m).