Record price for Koons sculpture

The stainless steel work has been on display in London's St James Square Enlarge Image

A Jeff Koons sculpture resembling a balloon model has sold for a record £12.9m at Christie's in London.

Balloon Flower (Magenta), a 9ft (2.75m) piece in high chromium stainless steel, looks like a modelling balloon twisted into the shape of a flower.

It fetched the highest price at auction for any of the US artist's work.

The sculpture was sold as part of a post-war and contemporary art sale, that included work by Francis Bacon, Gilbert and George and Lucian Freud.

A piece of work by UK-based duo Gilbert and George, called To her Majesty, also reached a record price of £1.9m.

Bacon's previously unseen Three Studies for a Self Portrait - owned by the same person since it was painted in the mid-1970s - sold for £17.3m.

Naked Portrait, by Freud, which was described by Christie's as one of his most important pieces to be offered at auction, fetched £11.8m.

This is the second highest price for any of Freud's paintings and comes a month after his life-sized portrayal of a sleeping, naked woman set a new world record price for a work by a living artist.

The 1995 portrait, titled Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, sold for $33.6m (£17.2m) at Christie's in New York.

Last week, a Claude Monet painting - Le Bassin Aux Nympheas - fetched a record £40.9m at an auction also held at Christie's in London.

All the auction prices included the buyer's premium - an additional fee kept by the auction house.