LE REVE (THE DREAM)

Le Reve (French, "The Dream") is a 1932 oil painting (130 * 97 cm) by Pablo Picasso, then 50 years old, portraying his 22-year-old mistress Marie-Therese Walter. It is said to have been painted in one afternoon, on 24 January 1932. It belongs to Picasso's period of distorted depictions, with its oversimplified outlines and contrasted colors resembling early Fauvism.

The erotic content of the painting has been noted repeatedly, with critics pointing out that Picasso painted an erect penis, presumably symbolizing his own, in the upturned face of his model.

LE REVE (THE DREAM)

Le Reve was purchased for $7,000 in 1941 by Victor and Sally Ganz of New York City. This purchase began their 50-year collection of works by just five artists: Picasso, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, and Eva Hesse. After the Ganzes died (Victor in 1987 and Sally in 1997), their collection, including Le Reve, was sold at Christie's auction house on November 11, 1997.

Le Reve sold for an unexpectedly high $48.4 million, at the time the sixth most expensive painting sold (tenth when taking inflation into account). The entire collection set a record for the sale of a private collection, bringing $206.5 million. The total amount paid by the Ganzes over their lifetime of collecting these pieces was around $2 million. On March 26, 2013, the New York Post reported that Steven A.Cohen of SAC Capital had bought the painting from Wynn for $155 million.

LE REVE AUCTION PHOTO

The buyer who purchased Le Reve at Christie's in 1997 appears to have been the Austrian-born investment fund manager Wolfgang Flottl, who also briefly held  Portrait of Dr. Gachet by Van Gogh in possession in the late 1990s. In 2001, under financial pressure, he sold Le Reve to casino magnate Steve Wynn for an undisclosed sum, estimated to be about $60 million.

The following are his famous paintings.