Painting Fetches Highest Price Ever for Living Artist

A huge oil painting by German artist Gerhard Richter sold for $37 million at Sotheby's yesterday, making it the highest price ever paid for a work by a living artist, reports the Guardian. Richter painted the 9-foot-by-9-foot Domplatz, Mailand, in 1968, and it last sold 15 years ago for "only" $3.5 million to Hyatt Hotels. The work depicts Milan's Cathedral Square in the 81-year-old Richter's distinctive style—it looks like a blurred photograph. The new owner is Don Bryant, founder of a Napa Valley vineyard, reports Reuters. "This just knocks me over," he says. (More Barnett Newman stories.)