Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914–16) sold at Sotheby’s in New York in 2025 for $236.3 million, setting a record for the most expensive work of Modern art ever sold at auction.
The sale was among the trophy lots that helped push Sotheby’s toward a roughly $7 billion global total for the year, a sign of continued strength at the very top of the market even amid a broader cooling.