The work is almost four meters high and two meters wide and shows a black and white multiplied image of a car accident. It was already in the possession of the German gallery owner Heiner Friedrich and the Swiss gallery owner Thomas Ammann.
A similar work – “Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster)” – was auctioned at Sotheby’s in New York in 2013 for $105.4 million. Another work by Warhol – a portrait of actress Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) – sold for an estimated $195 million in May, making it the most expensive 20th-century artwork ever to be auctioned.
In total, Sotheby’s was auctioning off about $315 million in artwork Thursday night. The traditional autumn auctions of the major New York auction houses will continue until the end of the week.