Warhol’s soup can painting sells for $11.7 mil

updated 2:58 p.m. ET May 10, 2006

NEW YORK - An early iconoclastic work by Andy Warhol of a Campbell’s soup can has sold for $11.7 million at auction.

The Christie’s sale of postwar and contemporary art Tuesday night also saw spirited bidding for three other early Warhol works.

“Small Torn Campbell’s Soup Can (Pepper Pot),” a hand-painted work from 1962 showing a large soup can with a torn label, was purchased by Manhattan dealer Larry Gagosian, Christie’s said, reportedly for Los Angeles collector and financier Eli Broad.

It was consigned to the auction by Los Angeles art dealer Irving Blum, the auction house said, and had been estimated to sell for $10 million to $15 million.

Warhol’s “S&H Green Stamps (64 S&H Green Stamps),” another work done in 1962, was sold to an unidentified telephone bidder for $5.1 million, after five people tried to buy it. It had been estimated to sell for $1.5 million.

The pop artist’s silk screen portrait, “Brigitte Bardot,” reportedly consigned by German industrialist Gunter Sachs who married the film sex siren in the 1960s, went for $3 million to another telephone bidder. And an unidentified Asian dealer fetched Warhol’s 1964 “Flowers,” a grouping of 16 silk screens, for $3.9 million, the auction house said.

All sale prices include a buyer’s premium of 20 percent of the first $200,000 and 12 percent thereafter.

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