Warhol's portrait of Marilyn Monroe hits record $195 million

Marilyn Monroe's Warhol looking to break a record 0:44

(CNN) --

One of Andy Warhol's iconic portraits of Marilyn Monroe has become the most expensive 20th-century work of art ever sold.

The 40-square-inch (258-square-centimeter) "Shot Sage Blue Marilyn," one of dozens of images the artist made of Monroe in the 1960s, sold for a record $195 million at Christie's in New York this Monday night.

Prior to the sale, Christie's had described "Shot Sage Blue Marilyn" as "one of the rarest and most consequential images in existence".

She has previously been exhibited in galleries such as the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Pompidou Center in Paris and the Tate Modern in London.

The auction house had initially said it expected bids "around" $200 million.

Andy Warhol photographed in 1968 at the factory at 33 Union Square West.

(Photo by Jack Mitchell/Getty Images)

Warhol's colorful reproductions of Monroe's photographic portrait—originally a publicity still from his 1953 film "Niagara"—are among his most recognized works, along with his iconic paintings of Campbell's soup cans.

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Using a technique called screen printing, which duplicates images on paper or canvas using a layer of fine mesh silk as a stencil, he began creating them in 1962, shortly after Monroe's death.

As with his depictions of other famous figures, such as Elvis Presley and Chinese leader Mao Zedong, the pop artist created numerous versions of Monroe's portrait in different colors and configurations.

Among the best known is the "Marilyn Diptych", owned by the British gallery group Tate, in which Warhol printed a grid of 50 portraits on two canvases.

Elsewhere, the Museum of Modern Art's "Marilyn Monroe in Gold" features a single printed image on a gold background, while in "Shooted Marilyns" the artist shot portraits of the star through the head with bullets.

In 1964, he developed a new "more refined and time-consuming" process that was "antithetical to the mass production for which he was best known," according to Christie's.

That year, he used it to create a limited number of portraits - a rare group of works to which "Shot Sage Blue Marilyn" belongs - before abandoning the technique.

Christie's

Although a handful of paintings are believed to have fetched prices in excess of $200 million in private sales (including works by abstract expressionist painters Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock), the feat has only been achieved once at auction: the " Salvator Mundi" by Leonardo da Vinci, which in 2017 sold for more than $450 million.

The previous auction record for a 20th-century painting was the $179.4 million paid for Pablo Picasso's "The Women of Algiers (version O)" in 2015.

The auction record for a Warhol work was previously held by "Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster)," depicting the shattered aftermath of a highway collision and sold for more than $105 million nearly a decade ago.

Several of the artist's other Marilyn images have also attracted huge sums at auction in recent years, with "White Marilyn" from 1962 selling for $41 million in New York in 2014.

Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, meanwhile, was owned by a succession of high-end gallery owners and collectors before being acquired by the late Swiss art dealer Thomas Ammann.

The portrait has been auctioned by the Thomas and Doris Ammann Foundation in Zurich, the charity created in his name (and that of his sister), which will use the proceeds to finance health and education programs for children around the world, according to a press release.

In a press release ahead of the sale, Christie's President of 20th and 21st Century Art Alex Rotter described the work as "the absolute pinnacle of American Pop" and "the most significant painting of the 20th century to be auctioned at a generation."

Alongside Botticelli's 'Birth of Venus', Da Vinci's 'Mona Lisa' and Picasso's 'The Avignon Ladies', Warhol's 'Marilyn' is categorically one of the greatest paintings of all time.

The work was one of four Warhol works from the Ammanns' collection being sold at the auction Monday night.

One of his famous serigraphs "Flowers" sold for US$15.8 million, and "GE/Skull", which he created in collaboration with the late Jean-Michel Basquiat, topped US$4.6 million.

Warhol's "Heinz Tomato Ketchup Box" sculpture sold for more than $478,000.

Works by Robert Ryman, Alberto Giacometti and Lucian Freud were also sold.

Two of the best-selling works were American artist Cy Twombly's paintings "Untitled" and "Venere Sopra Gaeta," which fetched $21 million and nearly $17 million, respectively.

Andy Warhol Marilyn Monroe