T hirty years ago, Eduardo F. Costantini stopped bidding on Leonora Carrington’s ‘Les Distractions de Dagobert’ when the price began to climb. He regretted it ever since.
In a standout, record-breaking moment during the Modern Evening Auction at Sotheby's New York on Wednesday, Costantini finally won the Surrealist masterpiece for a staggering $28.5 million following a 10-minute bidding battle that smashed the artist’s previous auction record.
The work will be exhibited at the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, which Costantini founded in 2001. A fan of the work for all these years, he remarked that Carrington’s whimsical depiction of King Dagobert I is “one of the most admired works in the history of surrealism and an unparalleled masterpiece of Latin American art.”