Described as one of Andy Warhol's more powerful and provocative images created in 1963 - a dead body amid the wreckage of a car crash titled "Silver Car Crash" (Double Disaster) — sold for 104.5 US million at Sotheby's contemporary art sale on November 13,2013 in New York,the highest price ever paid at auction for the Pop artist.
On November 12, Christie's recorded the world's highest bid with 142,4 million USD for Francis Bacon's triptych titled "Three Studies of Lucian Freud". Together this record and the price paid for the Warhol's masterpiece were a clear proof of the determination shown by superrich collectors to invest their money on prestigious works of art.
The Warhol piece is one of only four double-paneled car crash paintings that Warhol created in 1963 and the last of such size left in private hands. It was being sold by an unidentified European collector who had owned it for more than 20 years. "
The price fetched for "Silver Car Crash" went well over the 71.7 million paid in 2007 at Christie's for "Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I)," a smaller painting, also from 1963.
Sotheby's evening sale totalled 380.6 million USD, however under its 394 million estimate with 54 lots sold out of the 61 on offer.
Steven A. Cohen, the hedge fund billionaire and collector whose company, SAC Capital Advisors, has just been found guilty to insider trading charges before a Manhattan court, was reputedly one of the biggest sellers with some 87 million worth of art.
"A. B. Courbet," an abstract work by Gerhard Richter from 1986 owned by Mr Cohen sold for 26.4 million USD. Mr. Cohen. He also managed to get $10.9 million for "The Attended," an abstract painting by Brice Marden from 1996-99 also owned by the latter fetched 10,9 million USD.
His Andy Warhol's "Liz #1 (Early Colored Liz)" from 1963, however went for 18 million USD against a low estimate of 20 million.
To the ire of its two founders, the Dia Art Foundation was selling several pieces of its collection in order to pay for a major acquisition, raising 38.4 million US from this sale with John Chamberlain's 1963 "Candy Andy."made out of old car parts fetching 4,6 million USD while Barnett Newman's "Genesis — The Break," a 1946 abstract painting sold for 3.6 million US.
Cy Twombly's "Poems to the Sea," a suite of 24 drawings created in 1959, caused a surprise with a 21,6 million USD bid against a high estimate of 8 million.
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