Hedge fund manager Steven A Cohen has bought a Picasso painting from casino mogul Steve Wynn for a record price – six years after Wynn accidentally put his elbow through it.
Cohen, 56, who runs SAC Capital Advisors, purchased Le Rêve, a 1932 oil painting of Picasso's 22-year-old mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, for $155m (£103m). It is the highest price a US collector has ever paid for an artwork.
Cohen and Wynn, both billionaires, are well-known art collectors. Cohen's collection is reportedly worth $1bn and includes major works by De Kooning, Jasper Johns, Bacon, Koons, Van Gogh and Manet. He is also the owner of Damien Hirst's formaldehyde shark, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, which he bought in 2006 for $8m (£5.3m).
In 2006, Wynn, who has a disease affecting his peripheral vision, put his elbow through the canvas of Le Rêve while showing it to friends – among them Nora Ephron – reportedly a day after agreeing to sell it to Cohen for $139m (£92m). The accident created a six-inch tear.
The painting was mended, at a cost of $90,000 (£60,000) and now the damage is said to be invisible to the naked eye. "It's superbly restored," Beverly Schreiber Jacoby, valuation specialist and president of New York-based BSJ Fine Art, told Bloomberg. "If you didn't know that it has been damaged, you would not see it."
The sale is thought to have made Le Rêve the most expensive Picasso ever. Thanks to his continuing endorsement by the world's major galleries, prices of Picasso's work continue to rise. Two of his other paintings have sold for more than $100m. Another 1932 portrait of Walter, Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, was sold for $106.5m (£66m) at Christie's in May 2010. Garçon à la Pipe went for $104.2m (£61m) in 2004.
Renowned as one of Picasso's most erotically charged works, Le Rêve contains an image of an erect penis painted in the figure's face.
Cohen's acquisition of Le Rêve comes as his firm continues to face regulatory scrutiny as part of a federal insider-trading probe. Earlier this month, SAC Capital agreed to pay a record $616m (£407m) fine to settle two lawsuits, the largest-ever US insider-trading settlement.
A spokesman for Cohen declined to comment. A spokesperson for Wynn, the chief executive officer of Wynn Resorts Ltd, did not respond to a request for comment.
Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2013/mar/27/picasso-la-reve-steven-a-cohen
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