SHORT TAKES : Latin Artist’s Work Sets Record

NEW YORK — A painting by Remedios Varo sold for $825,000 Tuesday night, setting a new world auction record for a Latin American artist, Christie’s auction house announced.

The 1961 oil on masonite painting, titled “Hacia La Torre” (Toward the Tower), depicts eight fair-haired women with empty faces in somber costumes departing from a Neo-Gothic castle on bicycles.

Varo, a Mexican who was born in Spain, described the scene in a letter to her brother: “The girls are leaving their beehive-house to go to work. . . . They have a dazed look as if they are hypnotized, they use knitting needles as steering handles.” The previous auction record for a Latin American artist was set at Christie’s when Fernando Botero’s “Familia Protestante” sold for $715,000 to entertainer Andy Williams last November.