A Picasso oil painting from 1955 smashed the record for the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction when it soared to $179.4 million at Christie's on Monday.

The auction house had estimated Les femmes d'Alger (Version O) would sell for about $140 million, but several telephone bidders drove the winning bid to $160 million, for a final price of $179,365,000 including Christie's commission of just more than 12 percent. The buyer of the vibrant cubist work was not identified.

The most expensive work of art previously sold at auction had been Francis Bacon's triptych Three Studies of Lucian Freud, which sold for $142.4 million at Christie's in November 2013.