Unpublished Andy Warhol portrait auctioned for 17 million

England, February 17, 2011

Andy Warhol self-portrait was auctioned in London for $ 17 million. The auction house Christie’s expected less than half.

A private collector had it in his power since 1974. The table has two square meters and was acquired by a New York gallery whose owner identity was not revealed.

Warhol’s work, one of the most influential of contemporary painting, includes eleven self-portraits. Five of them are scattered in museums of different countries and eight were part of the artist’s retrospective devoted to the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1989, two years after his death.

Warhol self-portraits are, along with the can of Campbell’s soup and Marilyn Monroe images, the most popular paintings of the artist.