NEW YORK (AFP) — A Harlequin from Spanish painter Pablo Picasso's cubist period will be auctioned in November by Sotheby's in New York and is expected to fetch more than 30 million dollars, the auction house said Friday.
"Major works by Picasso don't often come to market... and this is a cubist painting, which are even more rarely offered for auction, regardless of whether they're by Georges Braque, Fernand Leger or Picasso," Sotheby's vice president for modern and impressionist art, Emmanuel Di-Donna, told AFP.
The painting, which dates from 1909, has been put up for auction by the family of the late surrealist artist Enrico Donati, who died earlier this year, aged 99.
Donati reportedly bought the Picasso Harlequin in Paris in 1940 for 12,000 dollars.
Prior to the auction on November 3, the Harlequin will be shown at Sotheby's London for five days at the beginning of October; the museum of modern art in Moscow in mid-October, and, from the end of next month until the auction date, at Sotheby's New York.
The harlequin figure with its trademark, brightly colored, checkered garb, is a frequent theme in Picasso's work and is often seen as the prolific artist's alter-ego.
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