LONDON, UK.- Sotheby's in London achieved its highest total ever for a sale of Contemporary Art this evening (February 10, 2005), auctioning 54 works of art for a total of £15,327,200 ($28,533,116). The sale also established new auction records for six artists.

More than ninety per cent of the works in the sale sold within or above their estimates, some fetching prices far in excess of expectations. Piero Manzoni's Achrome of 1959 for example, one of the masterpieces from his most important series, sold for £876,000 more than double its pre-sale estimate of £300,000-400,000*. Similarly Roy Lichtenstein's exquisite large pencil drawing Temple of Apollo, executed in 1964, which sold for £545,600, more than three times the pre-sale low estimate of £150,000. The price is also a new auction record for a work on paper by the artist. This drawing was from the collection of Jean-Yves Mock, as was the Soup Can drawing by Andy Warhol, which fetched £545,600, against an estimate of £120,000-150,000 - also a record for a work on paper by the artist.

Zao Wou-Ki's Bateaux au Claire de la Lune fetched £512,000, nearly four times the low estimate of £150,000, whilst Paysage à Agrigente, by Nicolas de Staël, sold for £792,000, against a pre-sale estimate of £500,000-700,000. The painting was the very first of a famous cycle of Agrigente paintings inspired by Sicilian light, which coincided with de Staël's rapid rise to fame in America, just two years before his tragic death.

The top lot of the sale was Lucio Fontana's Concetto Spaziale of 1963, from La Fine Di Dio series, which sold for £1,016,000. Executed over an eighteen-month period of enlightened, mature expression between 1963 and 1964 when Fontana was at the peak of his creative powers, this work epitomise the dynamic complexity and spirituality of his oeuvre.

There were two works in the sale by Jean-Michel Basquiat, both of which fetched £680,000. Untitled, a stark portrait of a horned, masked figure, and Kings of Egypt I, were both executed in 1982.

In addition to the records set for Lichtenstein and Warhol, there were four further records this evening. They were: Franz Ackermann's Evasion VI, which sold for £153,600; Glenn Brown's Beatification, which made £198,400
Sol LeWitt's Three Dimensional Modular Grid, which sold for £276,800; Grayson Perry's Isn't that Damien Hirst over there, which sold for £54,000.