Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2006

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Strip poker painting sells for $1.7 million

By Erin Warner

A painting of four mischievous card players engaged in a game of strip poker sold for $1.7 million at a Sotheby's Latin American art auction in New York on Tuesday.

The work, entitled "Card Players II" is by Columbian painter Fernando Berto, who is said to have been inspired by impressionist Paul Cezanne's famous piece "The Card Players."

Painted in 1989, the five-foot canvas depicts four plump people around a wooden table playing poker. Two women are nude, both men are fully dressed, and all appear to be participating in some form of cheating. In the scene, one man holds two cards behind his back while his neighbor is slipped an extra card over a floor littered with the pieces of the deck.

The brightly colored painting was the most expensive at the sale, which featured works from several Latin American artists. The auction brought in $14 million.

The director of Sotheby's Latin American art department told the Associated Press that Botero's "Card Players II" is the artist's best work in a series about the players.

"It has what they call in Spanish 'duende,' it has spark ... and everyone in the painting is doing something," he said to media sources.

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