LONDON, ENGLAND.- Sotheby’s tonight held the most successful Contemporary Art sale ever staged in Europe . The final total was a spectacular £45,762,000 ($90,224,359; €69,567,640) well in excess of the pre-sale estimate of £28.5-39.3 million.

Oliver Barker, head of Sotheby’s Contemporary Art department in London, said: “We are absolutely thrilled with the enormous, unprecedented success of tonight’s sale, and especially with the world record price achieved for a work by Peter Doig cementing his position among the finest painters of his generation. What was most notable this evening was the depth and the strength of the bidding for top quality works across a range of categories. While we had worked hard to set pre-sale estimates which reflected the market going into the sale, the extraordinary competition tonight reset price levels for numerous artists, raising them to international stature.”

British artists fared brilliantly tonight, commanding bids from a wide spread of international buyers. A new world record was achieved for Peter Doig, whose remarkable early masterpiece, White Canoe, dated 1990/91, achieved a phenomenal £5,732,000 against a pre-sale estimate of £800,000-1,200,000. Numerous private collectors competed in the room against bidders on the telephones, with the record price over 5 times the previous record for the artist offered by a bidder in the room to thunderous applause. Tonight’s record has placed Doig into a league with some of his artistic influences, including the likes of Edvard Munch.

Following in the footsteps of his London School contemporaries and friends, Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach tonight joined the select group of 20th century British artists whose works have sold at auction for over £1 million, who also include David Hockney and Bridget Riley. His 1977 masterpiece, The Camden Theatre in the Rain, achieved a record price of £1,924,000 (est: £500,000-700,000).

From a younger generation of British artists, Tim Noble & Sue Webster’s gaudy flashing light work of a bleeding heart, entitled Toxic Schizophrenia, established a new world record at auction for the pair of £356,000, against a pre-sale estimate of £180,000-250,000.

Moving away from British artists, Gerhard Richter’s beautiful Abstraktes Bild, from 1991, the most important example of the artist’s abstract series begun in the mid-1970s, was also extremely well-contested, and finally sold for a record price of £2,820,000 (est: £1,400,000-1,800,000). Cheyenne Westphal, Chairman of Contemporary Art, Europe said: “We are absolutely thrilled to re-establish our pre-eminence in the market for works by Gerhard Richter, and especially to have established a record for an abstract work by the artist.”

Tonight’s sale also saw a record set for a photograph at auction Andreas Gursky’s powerful, monumental and iconic image 99 cent II, Diptych, from 2001, sold for £1,700,000, against a pre-sale estimate of £900,000-1,200,000.

Following on from last October’s hugely successful 20th Century Italian Art sale, which made a total of £11.5 million, the extensive section of Italian art in tonight’s sale was led by an auction record for a sublime work by Piero Manzoni. His large and elaborately pleated Achrome, of 1959, sold for £1,700,000 (est: £1,500,000-2,000,000). Works by Lucio Fontana also sold well, particularly lot 23, Concetto Spaziale, Attese, which raised £1,028,000, against a pre-sale estimate of £500,000-700,000.

Younger artists, such as George Condo and Albert Oehlen climbed further up the auction ladder tonight. Condo’s surrealistic canvas, The Insane Cardinal achieved a record for the artist of £192,000, more than doubling its pre-sale high estimate of £90,000, while Oehlen’s Ohne Titel (Gelbes Kreuz), also achieved an auction record of £264,000 (est: £180,000-250,000).

Finally, tonight’s sale once again demonstrated the strength and depth of the market for works by Andy Warhol. His unique status in the art market was reinforced by the fact that all seven of his works offered tonight found buyers, and were sold for a combined total of £5,728,000. Late works by the artist did particularly well, with his Self Portrait (Fright Wig) selling for £1,476,000 and Hammer and Sickle for £1,532,000.