Monet water lilies sells for $43m

A painting by Wassily Kandinsky also sold for $23m at the Christie's auction of impressionist and modern art, setting a record for the artist.

Works by Picasso and Miro also went under the hammer in the first of two weeks of major auctions in New York.

However, about 30% of the 69 paintings up for auction failed to find buyers, Reuters reported.

Monet's oil-on-canvas Nympheas - painting in 1905 during the artist's years at Giverny - reached the high end of its $30m-$50m pre-sale estimate.

Kandinsky's vibrant work Studie fur Improvisation 8 had been estimated to fetch between $20m-$30m and was sold by Switzerland's Volkart Foundation.

The price broke the Russian artist's previous record of $20.9m for Fugue set in 1990.

The bronze La Jambe by Alberto Giacometti sold for $11.3m and the painting Peinture (Femme, journal, chien) by Spanish artist Joan Miro, sold for $13.7m.

Picasso's Buste de femme fetched $13m.

Among the works that failed to sell were the Picasso sculpture, Coq, estimated at $10m-$15m, and works by Chagall and Degas.

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