Who Was Gustav Klimt and Why Is His Work So Important?

On the night of November 21, 2025, the hammer came down after 20 minutes of heated bidding on Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914–16), the marquee lot at Sotheby’s New York auction house that evening. Expectations were high, considering that the painting was one of only two full-length likenesses by Klimt still in private hands, but the final offer left even hardened art market insiders goggle-eyed: It sold for $236.4 million, making it the second most expensive