ZURICH, Feb 12 — For a chance to see the world’s most expensive painting, you’ll have to head to Switzerland’s Beyeler Foundation.
French artist Paul Gauguin’s “When Will You Marry?” is on view in the gallery after selling for a record US$300 million (RM1.08 billion) at auction.
Details about the sale have been sparse. The buyer hasn’t been confirmed, although some reports say the painting was bought by a museum in Qatar.
Exhibition curator Raphael Bouvier.
“It’s great and we are honoured that we are perhaps one of the latest museums who will be able to present it in a public context.”
The 1892 work was painted on Gauguin’s first visit to Tahiti.
It has been owned by a Swiss family for nearly a century.
Now that it’s become the most expensive painting ever sold, visitors are flocking to the museum to get a last look before it leaves Basel in June.
“Unbelievable... But that doesn’t tell you how good the painting itself is. It is a wonderful painting. It’s very poignant, and it really shows the features, the really strong faces of these people. Very interesting, yeah.”
The painting will make its rounds to exhibitions in Madrid and Washington before settling in its permanent home at the end of the year. — Reuters
