Iconic Warhol portrait of Marilyn Monroe sells for record $195M

Andy Warhol's 1964 portrait of Marilyn Monroe sold for $195 million at a Christie's auction on Monday, breaking the record for a 20th-century work held by Spanish painter Pablo Picasso's "Les Femmes D'Alger (version 0).

The iconic painting, titled "Shot Sage Blue Marilyn," has become the second most expensive work in history to be sold at an auction. The first place goes to "Salvator Mundi," attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. According to the press, its current owner is the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, who paid $450.3 million for it in November 2017/.

In the packed room at Christie's headquarters in Rockefeller Plaza in New York, an individual purchased this Warhol work that belonged to the Foundation of the late siblings Thomas and Doris Ammann of Zurich, Switzerland.

Although it fell short of the $200 million Christie's had hoped to raise, this is the most expensive contemporary artwork acquired at auction—a record previously held by Pablo Picasso's Les Femmes d'Alger (The Women of Algiers - version 0) which fetched $179.4 million in May 2015, followed by Amedeo Modigliani's Reclining Nude sold for $170.4 million, also in 2015.

It also sold well above the record for a “Warhol,” the Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) for which $104.5 million was paid in 2013 and the $110.5 million paid for a Basquiat in 2017 at Sotheby's, the record so far for a work by an American artist.

The painting is considered one "most important" works to come to auction in this generation and represents the "absolute pinnacle of American pop art," said the 20th and 21st-century art section chairman Alex Rotter when Christie's announced its sale last March.

Made from a photo of a publicity poster for Henry Hathaway's film "Niagara" (1953), the painting embodies "the promise of the American dream that encapsulates optimism, fragility, celebrity and iconography at the same time," according to Rotter.

The sold painting belongs to the series of four one-by-one-meter reproductions that became known as "Shot" after a visitor to The Factory, Warhol's Manhattan studio, opened fire on them, piercing them.
According to the anecdote, the bullet went through four canvases, which Warhol later repaired. As a result, the "Shot" series was born.

The work was sold in a lot with 35 other pieces by artists such as Robert Ryman, Francesco Clemente, Sturtevant, or Cy Twombly, among others, in addition to other Warhol. The total raised on the first day of the spring auction season rose to 317.8 million dollars, which the Foundation will dedicate to health and education projects aimed at improving the lives of children around the world.