Woman III by Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning (April 24, 1904 - March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. He was born in Rotterdam and moved to the United States in 1926, becoming an American citizen in 1962.
Woman III is a painting by the abstract expressionist painter Willem de Kooning. Woman III is one of a series of six paintings by de Kooning done between 1951 and 1953, in which the central subject is women. It measures 68 x 48 + 1⁄2 inches (1.73 x 1.23 m) and was completed in 1953.
From the late 1970s to 1994, this painting was in the collection of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, but after the 1979 revolution, this painting could not be displayed because of strict government regulations about the visual arts and what they depict. Finally, in 1994 it was quietly traded by Thomas Ammann Fine Art to David Geffen for the remains of a 16th-century Persian manuscript, Tahmasbi Shahnameh.
In November 2006, the painting was sold by Geffen to billionaire Steven A. Cohen for $137.5 million.
Adjusted price: $145.4 Million | Original price: $137.5 Million
