ART

Collectors paid record prices Thursday for works by three Russian avant-garde artists, Sotheby’s auctioneers in London said. A watercolor by abstract painter El Lissitzky was bought for $214,700 by an anonymous Zurich dealer. A private American buyer paid $193,600 for an oil painting by Alexander Rodchenko, and a portrait by Mikhail Larionov fetched $146,080. “It has been so long since the last sale that it is difficult to compare prices,” said a Sotheby’s spokesman. At a 1972 sale, a Lissitzky went for just $7,800.