Alan Peppard

Sotheby's New York

Pablo Picasso's The Kiss, an oil on canvas painted the day before the artist's 88th birthday, brought a record price Wednesday.

The power of Pablo Picasso's brush and the prescience of Patsy and Raymond Nasher's collectors' eyes proved to be a record-setting combination Wednesday evening at Sotheby's auction house in New York.

Two late Picasso paintings and two Alberto Giacometti sculptures were sold at the impressionist/modern and contemporary art sale to benefit the endowment of the Nasher Sculpture Center.

Nasher Collection

Giacometti's bronze Femme Debout was conceived in 1961 and cast at a later date. It sold Wednesday at Sotheby's for more than $2.39 million.

Le Baiser (The Kiss), painted the day before Picasso's 88th birthday in 1969, went for $17.4 million, the highest price ever paid at auction for a post-1960 Picasso painting.

"Picasso was one of those rare artists who sustained the creative vigor throughout the whole of his career," said David Norman, co-chairman of impressionist and modern art for Sotheby's.

The second Nasher-owned Picasso, L'Atelier, 1961-62, brought $6.48 million.

Of the two Giacometti's, Femme sold for $1.27 million, while Femme Debout sold for $2.39 million. Wednesday night's combined take for the Nasher center's endowment was nearly $27.55 million, exceeding Sotheby's high-end pre-sale estimate of $25.7 million.

"The Picassos and the Giacomettis from the Nasher Collection were of very high quality and fresh to the market," noted Warren Weitman, Sotheby's chairman of North and South America. "Collectors responded with great enthusiasm."

More than 130 Nasher pieces will be sold Friday at Sotheby's in a "single-owner sale" that includes important works by Jasper Johns, Hans Hoffman, Roy Lichtenstein and Franz Kline.