ANDY WARHOL’S iconic sage-blue background portrait of Marilyn Monroe is tipped to sell for a record-breaking US$200 million at auction in May, Christie’s announced Monday.

The auction house said it expects Warhol’s 1964 “Shot Sage Blue Marilyn” to become the most expensive 20th century artwork when it goes under the hammer in New York City.

The silk-screen work is part of a group of Warhol portraits of Monroe that became known as the “Shot” series after a visitor to his Manhattan studio, known as “The Factory,” apparently fired a gun at them.

In a statement, Christie’s described the 100cm x 100cm portrait as “one of the rarest and most transcendent images in existence.” Alex Rotter, head of 20th and 21st century art at Christie’s, called the portrait “the most significant 20th century painting to come to auction in a generation.”

“Andy Warhol’s ‘Marilyn’ is the absolute pinnacle of American Pop and the promise of the American Dream encapsulating optimism, fragility, celebrity and iconography all at once,” he said in a statement.

Warhol began creating silk-screens of Monroe following the actress’ death from a drug overdose aged 36 in 1962. The pop artist produced five portraits of Monroe, all equal in size with different colored backgrounds, in 1964.

According to pop art folklore, four of them gained notoriety after a female performance artist by the name of Dorothy Podber asked Warhol if she could shoot a stack of the portraits.

Warhol said yes, thinking that she meant photograph the works. Instead, she took out a gun and fired a bullet through the forehead of Monroe’s image.

The story goes that the bullet pierced four of the five canvasses, with Warhol barring Podber from The Factory and later repairing the paintings, the “Shot” series.

The “Shot Sage Blue Marilyn” portrait portrays Monroe with a pink face, yellow hair and blue eye shadow set against a sage-blue backdrop. It was based on a promotional photograph of her for the 1953 movie “Niagara” directed by Henry Hathaway.

At an unveiling at Christie’s headquarters in Manhattan, Rotter said the portrait stood alongside Sandro Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus,” Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” and Pablo Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” as “categorically one of the greatest paintings of all time.”

Only 14 paintings have been sold for more than US$100 million at auction, although others are expected to have changed hands for as much during private sales. The most expensive 20th century artwork sold at auction is Picasso’s “Women of Algiers,” which fetched US$179.4 million in 2015. The auction record for a Warhol piece is “Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster)” sold at US$104.5 million in 2013.

In 1998, Sotheby’s sold the orange shot “Marilyn” for US$17 million.(SD-Agencies)