Picasso goes for record $179 m at auction

A Picasso oil painting from 1955 has smashed the record for the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction when it went for $179.4 million.

Picasso's Les femmes d'Alger Version O is now the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction http://t.co/0dXOPvZhdSpic.twitter.com/VYzRX7Iz32

— CNNMoney (@CNNMoney) May 12, 2015

Les Femmes d’Alger had been expected to sell for about $40 million, but several telephone bidders at Christie’s auction house drove the price up .

The buyer has not been identified.

Previously the most expensive work sold at auction was Francis Bacon’s triptych “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” which sold for $142.4 million in November 2013.