A painting by Andy Warhol has smashed the legendary artist's sales records by pulling in $105 million (£70 million) at auction in New York.

Warhol's Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster), which depicts the aftermath of a road accident, went under the hammer at Sotheby’s auction house on Wednesday (13Nov13) and was sold for the huge price to an unnamed telephone bidder.

The sale broke Warhol's previous record of $71.7 million (£51.5 million), which was paid for his Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I) in 2007.

Auctioneer Tobias Meyer says, "It's a great price - and completely worth it. It's the best painting I've ever sold in my whole career."

The sale marks the second-highest price paid for a contemporary piece of art - Francis Bacon's Three Studies of Lucian Freud fetched $142.4 million (£94.9 million) earlier this week (beg11Nov13).