An Andy Warhol piece of Queen Elizabeth II created for the 25th anniversary of the Coronation has fetched GBP 234,000 at auction.

The piece, signed in pencil by the famous American pop artist Andy Warhol (1928-1987) and numbered 9/40, is a “screenprint in colours on Lenox Museum Board with the blindstamp of the printer Rupert Jasen Smith, New York”, according to the Dorotheum auction house.

It was created in 1985 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the late British monarch’s Coronation and has now gone under the hammer for EUR 271,750 [GBP 234,000].

Newsflash obtained a statement from the Dorotheum auction house dated 30th November saying: “Andy Warhol’s portrait of Queen Elizabeth II from the ‘Reigning Queens’ series changed hands for EUR 271,750.”

The auction house also said: “Ladies first: the secret star of Dorotheum’s evening auction of Contemporary Art on 30th November 2022 was Carla Accardi. Her abstract fantastic animal Animale immaginario, a painting from 1988, sold for EUR 303,000 [GBP 261,000] – more than five times its estimate – establishing a world record for a work by the artist.

“Carla Accardi (1924-2014) is regarded as one of the most important representatives of the Italian avant-garde. A typical, small-format pumpkin painting by Yayoi Kusama, another important protagonist of the contemporary art scene, reached an outstanding EUR 478,000 [GBP 411,400].”

The auction house added: “The top price at the auction was fetched by a work by Lucio Fontana. Bids for his pink Concetto spaziale from 1965 only stopped at EUR 753,000 [GBP 648,100].”

“Works by Giuseppe Capogrossi, Alighiero Boetti, Paolo Scheggi and Enrico Castellani also achieved prizes far beyond expectations. Other outstanding results from the internationally appreciated offer were for works by Hans Hartung, Daniel Richter, Hermann Nitsch, and Franz West, among others.”

The Dorotheum auction house, which is one of the oldest in the world and is headquartered in Austria’s capital Vienna, had said on 15th November: “Andy Warhol portrayed an actual queen, namely Elizabeth II, in a series of pictures from 1985. Fame was this pop chameleon’s stated goal.

“No wonder, then, that Warhol wished to be as famous as the Queen one day. As he did for Marilyn, he elevated the long-serving head of the British Empire to icon status in his works.

“The painting offered at Dorotheum, no. 9 from an edition of 40, is from a private European collection. It was created as part of Warhol’s ‘Reigning Queens’ series, and was modelled on Queen Elizabeth II’s official photo on the occasion of her 25th coronation anniversary.”

The auction house had expected the painting to fetch between EUR 150,000 and EUR 200,000 (GBP 129,200 and GBP 172,340).

The painting was auctioned as part of Dorotheum’s Contemporary Week, between 29th November and 2nd December. The “Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom” piece went under the hammer on 30th November.