Sotheby’s puts on £40m show of art before New York sale
Works worth more than £40 million by artists from Andy Warhol to Claude Monet went on show in London before auction in New York.
Visitors to Sotheby's can see the paintings, which have an upper estimate of $67 million (£43.4 million) in a continuing sign that a booming art market is encouraging owners of top quality works to sell.
The auction house is displaying four works including a Mark Rothko and one by Amedeo Modigliani — highlights of this spring's impressionist, modern and contemporary auctions.
The huge Warhol is a rare piece from his final series of self-portraits produced in 1986 and is one of only two in private hands.
The New York sales on May 5 and 12 will also include Femme au Grande Chapeau, Buste, by Pablo Picasso which was bought from the artist's studio in the Sixties by the late Patricia Kennedy Lawford, sister of the US President JF Kennedy.
Although only the Monet, Modigliani, Warhol and Rothko have gone on show in London, the sale will also include Roy Lichtenstein's Expressionist Head with an estimate of up to $5.5 million (£3.5million).
