Warhol Art May Fetch $35m

Bloomberg reports that Andy Warhol's "Green Burning Car I" a dramatic painting from his early Death and Disaster series, will be offered at a high estimate of $35 million at Christie's New York May art auctions, Christie's International said late yesterday. If reached, the price would set a new auction record for the artist. The 1963 photo-silkscreen, showing multiple views of an overturned wreck in smoke and flames, with a man hanging from a pole nearby, is being sold from a private art collection where it has been for more than three decades. "It's a masterpiece,'' said private dealer Alberto Mugrabi, whose family owns one of the world's largest private Warhol art collections. ``It doesn't get better than that." The work will be part of the Impressionist, modern, postwar and contemporary art sales to be held May 8-17 in New York. The estimate makes "Green Burning Car I" one of the top three lots of the season. Sotheby's is offering Francis Bacon's 1962 painting of a pope at more than $30 million and a 1950 Mark Rothko painting from David Rockefeller, which it estimates at more than $40 million. Warhol's auction record of $17.4 million was set in November when his blue "Mao" (1972) sold at Christie's New York. Joseph Lau, a Hong Kong billionaire, bought the work. Willem de Kooning's 1977 "Untitled XXV," which sold for $27.1 million in November at Christie's New York, holds the auction record for a postwar artwork. (For full source and article click the Headline). Irish Art