An Andy Warhol portrait of Marilyn Monroe worth an estimated $200 million (€190m) is the main attraction at this year's spring art sales in New York.
Christie's expects Warhol's 1964 'Shot Sage Blue Marilyn' to become the priciest 20th century artwork when the auction house puts it under the hammer this Monday.
Not to be outdone, competitor Sotheby's is offering $1 billion of modern and contemporary art including the second helping of the famed Macklowe Collection, during its marquee week in May.
"The excitement is certainly unprecedented," Joan Robledo-Palop, a collector and CEO of Zeit Contemporary Art in New York City, told AFP, about the buzz surrounding this season's auctions.
The 100cm x 100cm silk-screen Warhol is part of a series of portraits the pop artist made of Monroe following her death from a drug overdose in August 1962.
They became known as the "Shot" series after a visitor to Warhol's Factory studio in Manhattan fired a gun at them, piercing the portraits which were later repaired.
Alex Rotter, head of 20th and 21st century art at Christie's, has called the portrait "the most significant 20th century painting to come to auction in a generation."
The current most expensive 20th century auctioned work is Picasso's Women of Algiers, which fetched $179.4 million (€170m) in 2015.
The auction record for a Warhol is the $104.5 million (€98m) paid for 'Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster)' in 2013.
Other highlights offered by Christie's include Jean-Michel Basquiat's 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict' (1982), expected to go for more than $30 million (€28m), and 'Untitled (Shades of Red)' by Mark Rothko, tipped to fetch up to $80 million (€75m).
The auction house is also offering three Claude Monet oil on canvases that are predicted to sell for upwards of $30 million (€28m) each.
"Every couple of decades you have a sale where the quality is so high that you don't see all of this at once normally. This season really grew into one of those unique moments," Mr Rotter told AFP.
