From the department of "You heard it here first" the last iconic Picasso in private hands will sell for over 250,000,000 including fees tonight in New York City. That a quarter of a trillion dollars. If a Francis Bacon can bring $140 million and a Giacometti the same a few years ago, a masterpiece by the worlds most influential and important artist should bring significantly more. Experts are saying the buyer will be Asian, but don't overlook Russia, Mexico, or even The Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas.

Picasso masterpiece expected to be the world's most expensive painting when sold at auction.

Pablo Picasso embarked on an epic project of 15 versions of Les Femmes d’Alger after the death of Henri Matisse, his friend and competitor. The final canvas is expected to break the $142 million world auction record at Christie’s in New York.

By Philip Sherwell, New York

12:25AM BST 11 May 2015 (courtesy The Telegraph)

A vibrantly-hued masterpiece by Pablo Picasso, painted as an elegy to his friend and rival Henri Matisse, is predicted to set a new world record for an artwork sold at auction in New York on Monday evening.

Widely regarded as the single most important painting by the Spanish artist to remain in private hands, Les femmes d’Alger (version O) has been the star turn in a crowd-drawing pre-sale global tour in Hong Kong, London and Manhattan.

The piece is expected to smash the current auction record – the $142 million (£92m) for a Francis Bacon triptych at Christie’s New York in 2013 – when the bidding finishes in the same auction room in Rockefeller Centre.

Christie’s has estimated the piece will fetch $140 million which, with the commission added, would already break the world record for Bacon’s painting of his friend Lucian Freud.

Pre-sale estimates do not include the standard commission of about 12 per cent, meaning that the final price for the Picasso would exceed $155 million if it sold for the Christie’s estimate. Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud sold for $142.4 million including commission.
Some artworks are understood to have exchanged hands for more on the private market, but details and sums have not been disclosed.

And in the current feverish market, where records are falling with the regularity of an auctioneer’s hammer, and with the popularity of Picasso among high-rolling modern art aficionados, there are predictions that the final bid will be significantly higher.
The buyer is likely to remain anonymous, setting off another wave of speculation about the identity of
the new owner and the destination for the piece.
The top end of the market has seen a heavy surge in Asian money, particular from China as the country’s new class of super-rich branch out their asset investments into lucrative art pieces.

The New York art world was abuzz when a mystery Chinese-speaker in jeans and a hooded jacket won the bidding at Sotheby’s for Vincent van Gogh’s L’Allee des Alyscamps for $66 million.
The current owner of Les femmes d’Alger (version O) is selling the work anonymously, 18 years after acquiring it at auction from the legendary collectors Victor and Sally Ganz.
Although the piece has been in private hands, it has drawn admiring crowds at several exhibitions, most recently in the Picasso show at Tate Britain in 2012.
The artist created a series of 15 variations of Les femmes d’Alger inspired by the French master Eugene Delacroix who in 1834 had painted The Women of Algiers in their Apartment.
Picasso embarked on the epic project in honour of his lost friend and competitor Matisse, who died in 1954, and the final canvas – version O – is the most highly acclaimed.
“In my 10 years at Christie’s no sale has attracted so many of our top clients or so much excitement,” Brooke Lampley, the head of Impressionist and Modern Art, told The Telegraph.
“There is an incredible thirst in the market right now for top-quality works by renowned artists. Pablo Picasso is the most highly recognised figure in the art world today and this piece is in many ways the culmination of his career.”
Jussi Pylkkanen, the auctioneer who is set to achieve the record hammer price, was in no doubt about the mood among the bidders.
“From the auctioneer’s rostrum it has become clear that the many new global collectors chasing masterpieces have been waiting for an iconic Picasso to appear on the market,” he said. “None is more iconic than Les femmes d’Alger.”
The current world auction record for a work by Pablo Picasso was set at Christie’s in 2010 when Nude, Green Leaves and Bust sold for $106.5 million.

Christie’s 2014 sales figures tell the scale of the booming market. The auction house recorded a 19 per cent annual increase in global sales for Impressionist and Modern Art last year, while its Post-War and Contemporary Art sales soared by 39 per cent over the previous year.
Sotheby’s also experienced the best sales night in its 270-year-history in November as two modern sculptures helped it achieve a record $422 million.
The Picasso is not expected to set the only record of Monday evening.
Alberto Giacometti’s whippet-thin bronze L’homme au doigt (Pointing Man) has been estimated at $130 million – which would be a new auction high for a sculpture.
A third masterpiece to go under the hammer is Claude Monet’s Le Parlement, soleil couchant, one of the series of paintings of the Palace of Westminster, drawing on the light diffused through dense mist mingled with coal smoke from the city’s furnaces. Its pre-sale estimate is $35-40 million.
Another eagerly-anticipated highlight is Andy Warhol’s silver spray paint silk screen of actress Elizabeth Taylor. Silver Liz, an early Pop Art piece, is expected to fetch at least $25 million.
The overall sale, Looking Forward to the Past, is conservatively estimated to earn $500 million on the night.