Mark Rothko's luminous canvas 'Orange, Red, Yellow' sold for $87 million at Christie's auction last night, breaking the record for the highest selling postwar and contemporary artwork sold at auction.

Rothko's work sold alongside work by Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Alexander Calder, Gerhard Richter and Yves Klein at the Christie's auction on Tuesday May 8, 2012, the evening totaled $388.5 million (£240.5m).

The New York Times reported that there was an unusually large array of Abstract Expressionist paintings at the auction, which the publication says was due in part to Christie's having won property from the collection of David Pincus who, with his wife Geraldine, had collected paintings and sculptures by Rothko, Pollock, Newman and de Kooning for decades.
Pollock's 'Number 28, 1951' sold for $20.5 million to a telephone bidder.

Newman's 'Onement V' sold to a telephone bidder for $22.4 million and Klein's 'FC1' also sold for a a record price of $36.4 million.

Only last week, Edvard Munch's 'The Scream' sold for a record $119.9 million (22.6m), proving forecasts that May was tipped to be a very big month for several auction houses selling Impressionist, modern and contemporary artwork this month.

Edvard Munch's iconic painting The Scream was sold for a world-recording breaking £19.9 million at Sotheby's auction last night, on May 5, 2012.

The 1895 painting was estimated to sell for $80 - $200 million, it was sold to an anonymous telephone bidder, and it surpassed Picasso's Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, which sold for $106.5 million in 2010, to be the highest selling artwork at auction.

Cezanne's The Card Player is the highest selling work of all time, having been sold at a private sale in Qatar for $250 million in 2011.

The masterpiece, one of four versions of The Scream created by Munch, had been owned by a Norwegian family since the 1930s, who knew Munch personally, and it was put on the market by the family member Petter Olsen.

This version is the only one of the four to be owned privately with the other three versions of The Scream currently in museums; two versions have been stolen while on display but have since been recovered.

This privately owned version is said to be the most desirable as it contains a poem on the frame, written by the artist that reads:

"I was walking along the road with two Friends

The Sun was setting

The Sky turned a bloody red

And I felt a whiff of Melancholy

I Stood, Still, deathly tired over the blue black

Fjord and City hung Blood and Tonges of Fire

My Friends walked on

I remained behind

Shivering with Anxiety

I felt the great Scream in Nature

-EM