FIRST OFF . . .

A Picasso painting of two circus performers, labeled “decadent” and confiscated in 1937 by the Nazis, is expected to fetch up to $17 million tonight at Christie’s auction house in London. Auction sources say that “Acrobat and Young Harlequin,” a rare Rose Period canvas, may soar past its bid estimate and set a record for Picasso. “Motherhood,” a Blue Period painting by Picasso, sold Nov. 14 at Christie’s New York for $24.75 million, a record for the artist and 20th-Century art. Picasso painted “Acrobat” in 1905, while he lived in the Montmarte area of Paris and frequently attended a nearby circus. He exhibited the 42x29-inch painting in 1905 in Paris. Sometime during the next six years it found its way to the Museum of Wuppertal-Elberfeld in Germany, where the Nazis seized it. Auction records indicate that the work sold in 1939 in Lucerne, where a Belgian collector bought it for 80,000 francs. The painting has been in private hands for the last 50 years.