A Picasso masterpiece has sold for $US160 million ($203 million) in New York, smashing the world record for the most expensive art sold at auction.

The 1955 cubist oil Les femmes d'Alger (Version 0), which depicts a colourful scene from a harem, went under the hammer at Christie's.

The auction house had estimated the painting, also known at The Women of Algiers, would sell for about $140 million, but several bidders competing via telephone drove the winning bid to $US160 million, for a final price of $US179,365,000 including Christie's commission of just over 12 per cent.

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Previously the most expensive work sold at auction was Francis Bacon's triptych Three Studies of Lucian Freud, which sold for $US142.4 million ($180 million) at Christie's in November 2013.

The 1955 painting by Pablo Picasso is one of the last major paintings by the Spanish master still in private hands.

He painted several versions until he settled on the 1.2-by-1.5-metre canvas.

The painting is a variation on Eugene Delacroix's 1834 Women of Algiers in their Apartment, which depicts Algerian concubines reclining and smoking a water pipe.

Loosely based on the original, Picasso's version uses bright colours and contorts the women's bodies so their fronts and backs are simultaneously presented to the viewer.

Giacometti statue sells for $141m

Minutes after the record-breaking Picasso sale, a bronze statue by Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti called Man Pointing set a new record for the world's most expensive sculpture sold at auction, selling for more than $US141 million.

Alberto Giacometti's bronze sculpture, Man Pointing, sold for a record $US141 million. ( AFP: Eduardo Munoz Alvarez )

Christie's senior vice president Loic Gouzer had predicted the two works could set a world record.

"You don't have another chance to get them," he said ahead of the auction.

Artprice chief executive Thierry Ehrmann had predicted that interest would be particularly strong for the Giacometti statue, which was valued at $US130 million.

"This will be the sale of the century," Mr Ehrmann said before the sale.

"It's a tipping point in the history of art."

There are only six casts in the world of Giacometti's Man Pointing, which shows a wiry, nearly six-foot (1.8-metre) man holding up one hand and pointing with the other.

Giacometti also held the previous record for the most expensive sculpture sold at auction with his Walking Man I fetching $US104.3 million in London in 2010.

In total, Christie's on Monday sold more than $US705 million worth of art at its 35-lot auction of masterpieces spanning more than a century from 1902 to 2011.

Picasso's Buste de femme oil painting sold for $US67.365 million, a painting from Claude Monet's The House of Parliament series went for $US40.485 million and Mark Rothko's 1958 No 36, Black Stripe fetched $US40.485 million.

New York's spring auction season began last week at Sotheby's, which sold a Vincent van Gogh painting for more than $US66 million, the most paid for a work by the Dutch post-impressionist since 1998.

Van Gogh's Les Alyscamps, which depicts a stand of autumnal trees, had been expected to go for around $US40 million but was finally snapped up by an Asian collector after an intense bidding war.

The sales continue on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Exponential growth in the art market, particularly for modern and contemporary works, is attributed to a growing number of private investors around the world and burgeoning interest in Asia and the Gulf.

Paul Gauguin's 1892 painting When Will You Marry? was reportedly bought privately by Qatar for $US300 million in February.

The proceeds from public art auctions rose 26 per cent from $US12.05 billion in 2013 to $US15.2 billion in 2014, and grew 422 per cent between 2000 and 2014, according to Artprice.

AFP