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Oprah reported to have sold Klimt painting for $150m

The Local Austria
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Oprah reported to have sold Klimt painting for $150m
Detail from Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II. Photo: Neue Galerie New York

American talk show host and billionaire entrepreneur Oprah Winfrey reportedly sold a Gustav Klimt painting for $150 million (€140.45m) in one of the biggest private art deals of 2016, according to a source who spoke to Bloomberg.

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Winfrey bought “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II” for $87.9 million in 2006 at Christie’s in New York, which is still an auction record for the Austrian artist. Since then, its value has risen by about 71 percent. She reportedly sold it to an unidentified Chinese buyer.

“Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II,” from 1912, depicts a woman in a long, narrow robe and black hat, standing against an ornate background of mauve and green. The subject, Bloch-Bauer, was the wife of a Jewish industrialist and art patron in Vienna.  

The painting was part of a collection looted by the Nazis and famously restituted by the Austrian government to Bloch-Bauer’s heirs in 2006. The legal battle over the works inspired “Woman in Gold,” a 2015 film starring Helen Mirren.

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