DHAKA: Picasso's Cubist works line the white walls of every leading international art museum, from the Museum of Modern Art in New York to the Tate Modern in London.

But now, one of his most seminal works is hitting the auction block, CNN reports on Monday (June 20).

Femme Assise (1909), one of the artist’s earliest Cubist paintings, is expected to go for $40 million at a Sotheby’s London auction on Tuesday. 

Experts said that it depicts Picasso’s lover and frequent model Fernande Olivier.

‘It is extremely rare,’ said Helena Newman, Sotheby’s global co-head of Impressionist and Modern Art department.

‘The vast, vast, vast majority of the works of the Cubist period of this importance went into museums of the world many years ago because Picasso’s Cubism has for many decades been considered one of the most important, groundbreaking periods not just for him, but for the whole of what was to come in terms of modern art.’

BDST: 1353 HRS, June 20, 2016
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