Poster fetches record price
2005-11-17 11:00
London - An original poster for Fritz Lang's 1927 science fiction film Metropolis has been sold for a world record price of $690 000 to a private United States collector, a London art gallery confirmed on Wednesday.
The art deco work by German graphic artist Heinz Schulz-Neudamm - is one of only four known copies. The others are at New York's Museum of Modern Art, Berlin's Film Museum and in another private collection.
Bruce Marchant, co-owner of the Reel Poster Gallery, where the poster was sold, said the sale highlighted the growing appeal of art deco classics.
"It was a market which didn't really exist until the early 1990's but since then it has exploded", Marchant said.
The previous highest price paid for a film poster was in 1997 when an original from the 1932 Boris Karloff horror classic The Mummy went under the hammer at Sotheby's in New York for $455 000.
Ken Schacter, from California, who bough the work, said: "This is one of the best film images of all time and probably the most sought-after poster in the world". - Sapa-dpa
- SAPA