Art News

Astonishing 1,252,000 Pounds for Munch Print at Bonhams

LONDON.- An impression of Edvard Munch’s controversial work Madonna has sold for an amazing £1,252,000 at Bonhams – twice its lower estimate of £500,000. This makes it the most expensive print ever sold in the UK and the second most expensive print in the world. Another Munch image, Vampire II, sold in Oslo in 2007 at the height of the market for around £1,256,000. Thought to be the first hand coloured version of this iconic image, the print shows the Madonna in yellow and white set against a halo of blue, green and red. The central figure is surrounded by a border containing spermatozoa and a foetus in a vivid blood red. The model for the Madonna was Munch’s mistress, Dagny Juel, a femme fatale who, after numerous ill-fated affairs, was shot dead by a young lover in a Tblisi hotel aged just 33. Munch produced the image in seven different states between 1895 and 1902 and this impression is from the very first s