Pablo Picasso’s Nu au Plateau de Sculpteur (Nude, Green Leaves and Bust), the world’s most expensive painting, was to go on display on Monday for the first time in Britain at London’s Tate Modern museum.
The 1932 painting set a world record when it was snapped up by a mystery bidder for $106.5 million at New York’s Christie’s auction house last May.
It will be the first time the painting has been displayed anywhere since 1961 and prompted the famous London museum to create a new Pablo Picasso room to house the loaned work.
“This is an outstanding painting by Picasso and I am delighted that through the generosity of the lender we are able to bring it to the British public for the first time,” said Nicholas Serota, the museum’s director.
The painting depicts the Spanish artist’s lover and muse, Marie-Therese Walter, lying nude with the painter looking on.
Picasso met Walter when he was 45 and she was 17 outside the Galeries Lafayette in Paris in 1927, while he was still married to Olga Khoklova.
—AFP