Woman III ($158.8 Million)

Artist: Willem de Kooning 

Date Painted: 1953 Art 

Style: Oil on Canvas 

Sold To: Steven A. Cohen
Price (Date of Sale): $140 Million (November 18, 2006) 

Adjusted Price Today: ~ $ 158 Million 

Woman III is one of a series of six paintings by de Kooning done between 1951 and 1953 in which the central theme was a woman. It measures 68 by 48 1⁄2 inches (1.7 by 1.23 m). 

From late 70s to 1994 this painting was part of Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art collection, but after the revolution in 1979, this painting could not be shown because of strict rules set by the government about the visual arts and what they depict. Shame, eh? 

The buyer, Steven A. Cohen, is an American hedge fund manager who has a net worth of 9.3 billion dollars (woah!), In November 2012, he began to be implicated in a large criminal insider trading scandal. In July 2013, SAC was charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission with failing to prevent insider trading. 

He is an avid art collector, and to date, Cohen has bought around $700 million worth of artwork; in 2003, the New York Times reported that in a five-year period, Cohen spent 20% of his income at art auctions.