Rufino Tamayo's "Troubadour" was auctioned for $7.2 million at Christie's.

Rufino Tamayo's painting "Troubadour" has been auctioned for $7.2 million, more than doubling the Mexican artist's previous high and setting a world auction record for Latin American art.

The painting, which depicts a musician strumming his guitar as two women watch, was acquired Wednesday at a Christie's auction by an anonymous telephone buyer in "very active" bidding, auction house spokeswoman Sung-Hee Park said.

The $7.2 million bid easily topped the expected sale price of $2 million to $3 million, eclipsing the previous record for a Tamayo painting, $2.59 million, and topping Frida Kahlo's "Roots," which sold in May 2006 for a record $5.6 million.

Christie's called the Tamayo sale "historic."

"This Tamayo is one of those things you only see once in a generation," said Virgilio Garza, head of Latin American art for Christie's.

The 1945 painting, which was sold by Randolph College in Lynchburg, Va., has not been on the auction block for more than 40 years.

The school had hoped to sell it to raise cash for its endowment last year but pulled it from auction at the last minute when a group of students and alumnae obtained an injunction arguing that the once all-women's college could not spend decades-old donations on coeducation.

The painting was donated in 1949.

College spokeswoman Brenda Edson last month said there were no legal restrictions impeding the painting's sale.

"Troubadour" was part of a two-day Christie's sale offering works by 145 Latin American artists from 14 countries, including Diego Rivera, Fernando Botero, Leonora Carrington, Claudio Bravo, Alfredo Ramos Martinez and Mario Carreno.

The 321 paintings and sculptures up for sale reflect the region's colonial, modernist, surrealist and contemporary periods.

Across town, rival auction house Sotheby's opens its own two-day Latin American art auction on Thursday with Tamayo's "The Watermelon Eater" (1949) topping the bill.