The Most Expensive Art on the Face of the Earth: 3 Pieces You Should Know About

September 24, 2015

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It’s true that a lot of artwork is sold online nowadays, as a full 71% of art collectors have bought art of some form online. However, the world’s biggest, most expensive pieces of art are usually sold at auction art events. Naturally, these art sales are incredibly expensive, more so than you might imagine.

Here are just a few of the most extravagant art sales of all time.

La Victoire de Samothrace
Glass artwork has been around for centuries. In fact, it was the establishment of the Roman Empire in the first century BCE that enhanced the spread of glassblowing, and the dominance of the new technology, which transformed raw materials into glass at a temperature of around 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit. Recently, glass sculptures inspired by France’s most expensive post-war artist, Yves Klein, sold at the Lalique department at Harrods for a price of £75,000 ($116,338.88 USD). They were made from the mould of La Victoire de Samothrace, a reproduction of an antiquity that Klein bought in the Louvre museum’s shop in 1960.

Les Femmes d’Alger (Version “O”)
Just last May, Pablo Picasso’s 1955 painting, “Les Femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’),” sold at auction for a staggering sum of $179.36 million to an anonymous buyer, making it the most expensive piece of artwork ever sold at auction. Les Femmes d’Alger is a series of 15 paintings, inspired by Eugène Delacroix’s 1834 painting “The Women of Algiers in their Apartment.”

Three Studies of Lucian Freud
Before “Les Femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’)” became the most expensive piece of art sold at auction, “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” held that title. The work of Francis Bacon had sold for a whopping $142.4 million in 2013. The oil-on-canvas triptych depicts the artist Lucian Freud, who was the artist’s, Francis Bacon’s, rival.

These are just some of the most expensive artwork out there. If you know of any other shockingly large art sales, feel free to share what you know in the comments.