Called “Femme Assise, Robe Bleu”, (Seated Woman in Blue Dress), the painting features one of Picasso’s many lovers, Dora Maar. The two had an intense relationship for nine years. 
He painted Seated Woman in 1939, when he was 58 and she was 31.
During World War Two, the Nazis seized the painting but were intercepted on their way from Paris to Moravia by French Resistance fighters.
This week at Christie’s impressionist and modernist week the highly desirable piece sold for well over estimates at $45 million to someone with more money than sense operating through a rep from Christie’s Asia.
Picasso wasn’t the only master artist pulling in major sales. Here are a few other works picked up this week at auction:
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- Leda and the Swan, 1962 by Cy Twombly, Sold for: $52,887,500
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- Andy Warhol, Big Campbell’s Soup Can with Can Opener (Vegetable), 1962. Sold for: $27,500,000
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- Roy Lichtenstein, Red and White Brushstrokes, 1965. Sold For: $28,247,500
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- Jean-Michel Basquiat’s “La Hara,” Sold for $35 million.
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- Constantin Brancusi‘s La muse endormie (1913) Sold for: $57.4 million
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- Marc Chagall’s Les trois cierges (1939) Sold for $14.6 million
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- Claude Monet’s La route de Vétheuil, effet de neige (1879) Sold for $11.4 million
