SINGAPORE: Andy Warhol’s iconic One Dollar Bill (Silver Certificate), the first painting of the greenback that set the foundation for his entire “dollar bill” series, was sold for £20.9 million ($44 million) at Sotheby’s recent auction of contemporary art in London, where £130.38 million worth of art was sold.

The 4.3ft-tall 1962 work of art — the only painting from the dollar bill series that was painted entirely by hand by the late American artist — was the top lot at the July 1 sale, which included two major self-portraits by Francis Bacon (both works were sold for nearly £30 million) and Gerhard Richter’s A B, Brick Tower (£14.149 million). Warhol’s dollar silkscreen, Dollar Signs, acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas fetched £6.925 million. “Bidders from across the globe were drawn to Warhol works that ripped up the rule book for 20th-century art,” says Alex Branczik, Sotheby’s head of contemporary art, London, in a recent statement.

Bacon’s Study for a Pope I, which was estimated to fetch between £25 million and £35 million, failed to sell. No bid was made for the 1961 artwork that was inspired by Diego Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X painted in 1650.

This article appeared in the Personal Wealth of Issue 685 (July 13) of The Edge Singapore.