Andy Warhol’s painting Silver Car Crash sells for record $105 million at Sotheby’s

Andy Warhol’s painting Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) has sold for $105 million at Sotheby’s, breaking the artist’s record by more than $30 million.

Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) depicts the aftermath of an accident, with a twisted body sprawled across the mangled interior of a vehicle.

It is one of four double-panel car crash paintings that Andy Warhol created in 1963. The others are all in museums.

Andy Warhol’s previous auction record was set in 2007, when $71.7 million was paid for Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I).

Silver Car Crash has previously been owned by collectors such as Charles Saatchi, Thomas Ammann, as well as German multi-millionaire playboy Gunter Sachs.

Five bidders went as high as $80 million, said auctioneer Tobias Meyer. Sotheby’s did not identify the winner, who placed their bid by telephone.

“It’s a great price – and completely worth it,” said Tobias Meyer.

“It’s the best painting I’ve ever sold in my whole career.”

The price was the second-highest in history for a contemporary work of art – the highest being the $142.4 million fetched by Francis Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud earlier this week at Christie’s.

Andy Warhol’s record-breaking work used images appropriated from newspapers, which he then silk-screened onto canvas, using reflective silver paint, repeating the scene many times over. The second panel in the 8-by-13 foot work is a blank canvas of silver.