Sotheby's Sells Giacometti for Record $104.3 Million

In a tense contest at the company's London salesroom, bidding on the spindly bronze "Walking Man I" began at £12 million and quickly escalated, with roughly 10 bidders vying for the sculpture. The winner bid over the telephone and chose to remain anonymous.

The sale breaks the previous $104.2 million auction record, set six years ago at Sotheby's, for Pablo Picasso's 1906 portrait "Boy With a Pipe," whose buyer remains unknown.

The lofty price for the Giacometti work came as a surprise to Sotheby's, which had expected the sculpture to sell for around one-fourth of the final price. David Nahmad, a Monte Carlo-based art dealer who vied unsuccessfully for the Giacometti sculpture, said the sale shows that after a weak year, the wealthy are once again "parking their cash in art."

The six-foot-tall bronze depicts a wiry man in mid-stride, his right foot jutting forward, his head erect and his arms hanging at his side.

Giacometti, a Swiss modern master known for his haunting sculptures of blank-face Everymen, cast the work 50 years ago as part of a commission to plant several of his bronze figures outside Chase Manhattan Bank in New York City's financial district. The artist famously struggled with the project and eventually abandoned the commission. But he later cast stand-alone versions of some of the planned sculptures, including "Walking Man I."