Gustave Klimt painting fetches $53.2 million

The world-famous landscape painting "Insel im Attersee," Islands on the Lake Attersee, by the Australian painter Gustav Klimt has been purchased for $ 53.2 million at an auction organized by Sotheby's Auction House.

A Japanese collector on May 17 paid $53.2 million for the purchase of the early 20th-centru painting, the auction house in New York announced.

This was the first time the work had gone under the hammer.

The work sold after a seven-minute bidding war, the auction house said.

The painting "Empire of Lights" by Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte (1898-1967) was also sold - for a hefty $42.3 million.

All told, Sotheby's night auction brought in about $427 million.

Klimt painted Insel im Attersee (1901-02) in the Salzkammergut region of Austria, and focused most of the landscape's composition on the water of Attersee, a lake the artist often visited with friends in summer. Klimt's use of colours, light and texture to create a kaleidoscopic effect on the water's surface shows a critical link to the artist's so-called "Golden Period" when he created many of his best-known works, according to Sotheby's.