Andy Warhol's Liz #3 is to cross the block at Sotheby's Contemporary Art Evening Auction on November 11 in New York.
The 1963 silkscreen print, which depicts actress Elizabeth Taylor, is one of the earliest colour versions of the piece.
 Andy Warhol executed Liz #3 in 1963 |
Her role as Cleopatra in Joseph L Mankiewicz's film of the same name (and her onscreen and off-screen relationship with co-star Richard Burton) had shoved her into superstardom earlier that year.
Andy Warhol too was at the height of his creative powers, one of very few artists to become a household name. The work follows on from his Marilyn - another piece that plays with iconography and the media.
Sotheby's comments: "Liz #3 powerfully sums up the extraordinary contribution Warhol made to the lexis and praxis of art.
"An image of a film star, purloined from a publicity photograph, becomes iconic not just of the vagaries of life and death, but also of the questions of beauty, and how society embraces and nurtures such a dynamic.
"The aesthetic and the conceptual are thus inextricably linked, revealing Warhol's focus on searching questions of how and why celebrity matters."
The sale of Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) last year set a new auction record for Warhol at $105.4m.
The sale will also include a work by Mark Rothko valued in excess of $50m.
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