Andy Warhol masterpiece from ‘Death And Disaster’ series sells for £72 million

The rare masterpiece White Disaster (White Car Crash 19 Times) went under the hammer in New York on Wednesday.
Andy Warhol masterpiece from ‘Death And Disaster’ series sells for £72 million (Sotheby’s/PA)
Mike Bedigan17 November 2022

Andy Warhol’s masterpiece White Disaster (White Car Crash 19 Times), has sold for £72 million, one of the highest prices ever achieved for a work by the artist at auction.

The rare work from the US artist’s celebrated Death And Disaster series garnered almost a third of the total sum raised by an evening of contemporary sales at Sotheby’s on Wednesday night.

Taking place in New York, the sale totalled £265 million, the auction house said.

The titan of pop art, who was said to be fixated on themes of death and mortality, printed 19 images of a fatal car crash in black and white tones to match the newspapers from which he drew inspiration creating White Disaster (White Car Crash 19 Times).

The 1963 piece is considered one of the most provocative and haunting artistic achievements of the 20th century and “arguably the most significant achievement of his career”, Sotheby’s said.

The work, from a private collection where it has been for 25 years, is the first large painting from Warhol’s Death And Disaster series to come to auction since 2013 when Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) made 105.4 million dollars (£91 million) – a record for the artist at the time.

Prior to that, the only other work from the series to come to auction in the past 15 years also set an auction record for the artist in 2007 when Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car) sold for 71.7 million dollars (£62 million).

Measuring 12ft tall, it is the largest of all Warhol’s single-panel Car Crash works.

The Sotheby’s auction on Wednesday also saw strong prices for works from celebrated collections, including from the de Kooning Family Collection, The Collection of Geraldine and Harold Alden, The Mallin Collection, and The Collection of William S Paley.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in