One of the most famous Marilyn Monroe images, painted by the late great Andy Warhol, is going up on the auction block, and it’s expected to set a pretty amazing record … as in $200 million worth of amazing!!!
You heard that right … Christie’s auction house in London is putting the painting up for auction in May, and the expected 9-figure price tag would make it the most expensive piece of 20th-century art ever sold.
If things go the way Christie’s thinks it will … the sale would top the value of Picasso‘s piece, “Women of Algiers,” which fetched $179.4 mil about 7 years ago.
This particular Warhol is known as “Shot Sage Blue Marilyn” — there are 5 other versions in this Monroe series, each in a different color.
It comes from a collection owned by Swiss siblings, and all the proceeds will go to their Thomas and Doris Ammann Foundation, which benefits children causes.
If the painting goes for $200 mil … it will nearly double Warhol’s previous auction record — $105 million for a painting called “Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster).”
Already, the buzz about the Marilyn auction has brought back interest in all things Warhol, and his Netflix doc is trending again.
On top of breaking a record for 20th-century art, if sold at this price, it would make it the second most expensive artwork overall to ever sell at auction … runner-up to a $450 mil Leonardo da Vinci piece!!