Picasso painting breaks Australian selling record

CANBERRA, June 18 (Xinhua) -- A Picasso painting was sold on Wednesday for 6.9 million Australian dollars (6.48 million U.S. dollars), making it the most expensive piece of art to be auctioned in Australia.

The brightly colored abstract Sylvette went under the hammer at Deutscher-Menzies Galleries in Kensington, Sydney, later in the day.

After a brief bidding war between two phone bidders, an unknown buyer snapped it up for a 5.75 million Australian dollars, or 6.9 million dollars, including a buyers premium, the Australian Associated Press reported.

The sale smashed the previous record, held by the sale of Brett Whiteley's The Olgas For Ernest Giles, which sold for 3.48 million dollars in the same gallery last year.

Sylvette was painted by Pablo Picasso when he was in his eighties and living the Cote d'Azur in south eastern France.

The painting was formerly part of the collection of Rodney Menzies, the director of the gallery.