Haircare magnate pays $150m for Picasso 'Shrek' portrait

NEW YORK - An unflattering portrait of one of Picasso's most celebrated lovers, artist Dora Maar, has sold for US$95.2 million ($149 million) at a Sotheby's auction in New York, the second-highest auction price paid for an artwork.

The 1941 Dora Maar au Chat transforms the visage of his glamorous girlfriend into a female Shrek. Despite its overt misogyny, the eye-catching portrait almost doubled its presale estimate of US$50 million.

The unidentified buyer, seated in the back of the salesroom, outbid several phone bidders. The seller was a member of the Gitwitz family, which made its fortune from Helene Curtis hair products.

Maar has talon-like fingernails in the painting, a 120cm by 90cm canvas with a profusion of colours including green, red, orange and purple.

"It's a very handsome painting and I like the way the hands are painted," Picasso biographer John Richardson said before the sale.

The most expensive artwork ever sold at auction was Picasso's Boy with a Pipe, which fetched US$104 million at Sotheby's in 2004.

Richardson called the Maar painting "more commercially saleable" than the more abstract portrait of Picasso's first wife, ballerina Olga Khokhlova, that sold for US$34.7 million this week at Christie's International in New York.

- BLOOMBERG