Gerhard Richter's oil painting sells for record 21m at London auction
London, October 14 (ANI)
An oil painting by the German artist Gerhard Richter, which was owned by rock star Eric Clapton, was sold for 21m pounds at Sotheby's in London on Friday - an auction record for a work by a living artist.
Abstraktes Bild, painted in 1994, has been described as a "masterpiece of calculated chaos" and expected to fetch 9-12m pounds before it was sold to an anonymous bidder.
Richter, 80, who lives in Cologne, is considered by some to be the world's greatest living painter.
Sotheby's called Abstraktes Bild a "paradigm of Gerhard Richter's mature artistic and philosophical achievement," the BBC reported.
"Abstraktes Bild is one of the great abstract masterpieces by Gerhard Richter," Alex Branczik, senior director of contemporary art at Sotheby's, said of the painting, said before the sale.
"Its appearance on the market presents collectors with the unique opportunity to acquire an outstanding work by one of the greatest living painters," the BBC quoted him as saying.
A sister painting of the artwork is currently jointly owned by the Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland.