A painting by Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani has sold for 27 million euros ($29.7 million) including fees at a Paris auction, setting a new French record for the artist's work. The painting, titled "Buste d'Elvira" (Bust of Elvira), was sold by Sotheby's on Friday in what the auction house described as a landmark sale.
Created between 1918 and 1919, the portrait depicts a young girl from Cagnes-sur-Mer, whose face appears in several of Modigliani's paintings from when he was staying in the region. The work had been estimated to sell for between 5.5 and 7.5 million euros, making the final price nearly four times the high estimate. The painting was among the star lots of the auction alongside another Modigliani work.
The second Modigliani piece, a rare 1915 portrait of Raymond Radiguet, the young prodigy author of "The Devil in the Flesh," sold for 10.6 million euros including fees. Modigliani painted this portrait when most French artists were mobilized at the front during World War I. The artist encountered young Raymond Radiguet, who was only 12 years old at the time and was skipping school to frequent avant-garde artist circles in Montparnasse, and immortalized the future writer in this work.
Earlier in the day, another significant sale took place when the first of Belgian artist René Magritte's famous "La Magie Noire" (Black Magic) paintings sold for 10.7 million euros including fees at another Sotheby's auction. This sale established a record for a painting from this series, which depicts a female body suspended between flesh, stone, and sky, and has become mythical in the surrealist artist's body of work.
Painted in 1934 and acquired directly from the artist in 1935 by its former owners, this was the very first version of the series and had been estimated to sell for between 5 and 7 million euros. The previous auction record for a "Black Magic" painting was achieved in 2015 in New York at Christie's for $6.7 million (5.7 million euros), according to Sotheby's.
These record-breaking sales demonstrate the continued strength of the market for modern masterpieces and highlight the enduring appeal of both Modigliani's distinctive portraits and Magritte's surrealist imagery among collectors worldwide.
