Andy Warhol’s White Disaster to sell for more than $80,000,000 at Sotheby’s

An Andy Warhol painting not displayed publicly in over 15 years is expected to sell for over $80,000,000 at Sotheby’s auction house.

The painting, called ‘White Disaster,’ was finished in 1963. To create the piece, Warhol duplicated the same black-and-white image of a car crash 19 times on a massive, 12 foot by 6 foot canvas.

‘White Disaster’ is one of Warhol’s largest paintings and the largest piece in his ‘Death and Disaster’ series created in 1963. The original photograph used for ‘White Disaster’ was featured on the front cover of ‘Newsweek’ on June 3 of that year.

‘Andy Warhol was also deeply preoccupied with the prospect, and idea, of death,’ Sotheby’s stated.

The auction house called the painting ‘a work of unique scale and intensity’ and ‘one of the most provocative and haunting artistic achievements of the 20th century, and arguably the most significant artistic achievement of the artist’s career.’