One of Constantin Brancusi’s “Bird in Space” series brought an auction record $27.4 million at Christie’s New York sale of Impressionist and modern art. The identity of the bidder who bought the Brancusi this week through a Christie’s agent was not announced, but speculation in the auction room focused on Paul G. Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft; Israeli collector Sammy Ofer; cosmetics magnate Ronald S. Lauder and publisher S. I. Newhouse Jr. The work had carried a pre-sale evaluation of $12 million. Created by the Romanian-born sculptor in 1922-23 out of gray-blue marble, the sculpture was sold with its original limestone base and packing box. It was discovered only recently by a Christie’s expert in a Paris attic of the family of a private collector who acquired it in 1937. Other top prices in the sale at Christie’s were $13.4 million for a Pablo Picasso classic period painting, “Head of a Woman,” $11.7 for Paul Cezanne landscape, “Large Trees Under the Jas de Bouffan,” and $8.4 million for a bronze cast of cast of Alberto Giacometti’s “Woman Leoni.” © Copyright 2005 by United Press International

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