The price is close to the world record for a piece by the Spanish artist, Sotheby's auction house said.
The 1941 portrait of Dora Maar, a photographer who became Picasso's lover, is so precious that Sotheby's did not print a price estimate for the work in its auction catalogue.
Although a roung estimate of its value before the sale was about US$50 million.
Picasso's 1905 masterpiece Boy with a Pipe remains the most expensive painting ever sold since it went under the hammer at a New York auction for $US104.2 million ($A135.63 million) in May 2004.