Which version of Picasso's 'Les Femmes d'Alger' series sold for $179.4 million in 2015? Version O. It was the final painting in Picasso's 15-work series, created in 1955.
The series was painted in 1954–1955 as Picasso's variations on Eugène Delacroix's 1834 masterpiece The Women of Algiers in Their Apartment. Picasso began the project shortly after Henri Matisse's death, linking the subject to both Delacroix and Matisse's famous odalisque paintings.
Version O had already sold for $31.9 million in 1997 as part of the Victor and Sally Ganz collection. At Christie's in New York in May 2015, it sold again for $179.4 million including fees. The buyer was Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, the former prime minister of Qatar.
A common mix-up is confusing the series' lettered versions with separate paintings by unrelated artists. Version O was the auction record-holder for a painting until Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi surpassed it in 2017; it remained the auction record for a 20th-century painting until Andy Warhol's Shot Sage Blue Marilyn sold in 2022.