The contemporary art market continued its steady climb at Sotheby’s on Wednesday night, with a sale dominated by a strong grouping of paintings by international blue chip artists that brought in £87,915,500 ($144,550,665).

Ten of the 57 lots offered went unsold, for a trim buy-in rate by lot of 17.5 percent and seven percent by value. Twenty of the forty-seven lots that sold fetched over a million pounds and twenty-three made over a million dollars. The results were comfortably in the middle of the pre-sale expectations of  £68,450,000-93,110,000 ($112,545,490-153,091,462), and the tally surpassed last February’s total of £74,364,200 ($116,357,664) for the 44 lots sold.

The evening got off to an over-the-top start with New York sensation Lucien Smith’s “Two Sides of the Same Coin” from 2012, a large abstraction in enamel on unprimed canvas, selling to a telephone bidder for £224,500 ($369,123; est. £ 40-60,000/$66-98,500). Paris dealer John Sayegh-Belchatowski was the underbidder.

The work’s provenance trail was short, leading straight from the OHWOW Gallery in Los Angeles to a private collection Paris. No exhibition history was listed.

Christopher Wool’s “Untitled” from 2000, a blotchy abstraction in enamel on rice paper, sold for £362,500 ($596,022; est. £150-200,000/$246,000-328,000), and a Wade Guyton “Untitled” from 2007, a large-format Epson UltraChrome inkjet on linen resembling a giant, computer generated ‘X,’ sold for £1,202,500 ($1,977,150; est. £800,000-1.2/$1,320,000-1,970,000). London dealer Olyvia Kwok was the underbidder.

The first of three Gerhard Richter paintings, a medium scaled “Abstraktes Bild” from 1997 that was fresh to the market since the seller bought it from the Anthony d’Offay Gallery in 1998, soared to £4,002,500 ($6,580,910; est. £2-3/$3,280,000-4,920,000).

Lucio Fontana’s “Concetto Spaziale, Attese” from 1965, painted in pristine white and cut with five vertical slash marks, sold to international dealer David Nahmad for £2,154,500/$3,542,429 (est. £1.5-2/$2.46-3.28 million. One of five Fontana offerings on Wednesday, it last sold at Sotheby’s London in June 1990 for what was then a market-correct price of £242,000 hammer.

Another Italian master, Alberto Burri—whose value was no doubt goosed by a record price achieved at Tuesday night’s single-owner sale at Christie’s—was represented by “Rosso Plastica” from 1963, a blood red and cratered work executed in molten plastic, acrylic, vinavil and combustion on canvas. It sold to Nahmad for £3,666,500 ($6,028,459; est. £2-3/$3.28-4.92 million).

A Cy Twombly painting, the large-for-its-time “Untitled (Rome)” from 1964, comprised of oil, wax crayon andse pencil on canvas, set off a bidding war and eventually sold to a telephone bidder for £12,178,500 ($20,023,890; est. £5-7/$8.19-11.47 million). Larry Gagosian was the underbidder.

Appearing on the market for the first time since the seller acquired it in the late 1970’s, the painting looked remarkably fresh and vibrant, with staccato bursts of color ranging across the vast expanse of grey background. Although it missed the auction record of $21.7 million set last November at Sotheby’s (by Twombly’s “Poems to the Sea” from the Dia Art Foundation), it exemplified what Oliver Barker, the evening’s auctioneer and deputy chairman of Sotheby’s Europe, was talking about when he said, “the market knows what it wants: real masterpiece quality.”

The evening’s most expensive offering,  Gerhard Richter’s unusually smooth surfaced abstraction “Wand (Wall)” from 1994, scaled at a majestic 94 ½ by 94 ½ inches, triggered a contest among three telephone bidders and sold for the top lot price of £17,442,500 ($28,678,958; est. £16-20 million).

The painting has a rich exhibition history, including important museum shows like one at the Museum of Modern Art in 2002-03. It also carried a Sotheby’s financial guarantee, assuring its “sale” no matter what the outcome.

London School painters also made up part of the evening mix as Frank Auerbach’s thickly impastoed and brightly colored street scene, “Morning-Mornington Place” from 1971-72, realized £1,818,500 ($2,989,978; est. £600-800,000/$985,000-1.32 million). London dealer James Holland-Hibbert was part of the posse of underbidders.

Lucian Freud’s dramatic and cropped “Head on a Green Sofa” from 1960-61, featuring his close friend Lady Belinda Lambton, sold to London dealer Stephen Ongpin for £2,994,500 ($4,923,557; est. £2.5-3.5/$4.1-5.74 million). The painting  was most recently exhibited at the blockbuster London National Portrait Gallery traveling show “Lucian Freud Portraits” in 2012. Dashing out of the salesroom, Ongpin confirmed he had bought the painting on behalf of a client, but wouldn’t say more.

Far afield from Auerbach and Freud, Sigmar Polke’s grandly-scaled and experimental “Rokoko” from 1994 plays off an 18th-century painterly tradition known as fete galante, or what you would normally expect in an Antoine Watteau painting. Here Polke takes it through its decorative paces, including ghostly outlines of fancily frocked women. It sold for £2,546,500 ($4,186,955; est. £1-1.5/$1.64-2.46 million). David Nahmad was the underbidder, possibly indicating Polke’s still-undervalued market has a brighter future.

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1981 “Untitled,” a powerful early work on paper in acrylic, oilstick and chalk that is covered with skulls and jittery graffiti, sold to New York dealer Jose Mugrabi for  £1,706,500 ($2,805,827; est. £700-900,000/$1.15-1.48 million). Larry Gagosian was the underbidder. It last sold at Christie’s New York in February 2007 for $692,000.

A much larger and later Basquiat, “Tenor” from 1985—manically busy with Xerox collage on paper; black, disembodied bird heads; and other fetish-like objects—brought £4,338,500 ($7,133,362; est. £3.8-4.8/$6.23-7.87 million). And yet another Basquiat, the relatively simple “Water –Worshipper” from 1984, sold to dealer Olyvia Kwok for £2,490,500 ($4,094,880), just as it was about to be bought in.

“I think it was a bargain,” said Kwok as she exited the salesroom, “and I believe that by the end of the year it will be in a different league.”

Of the five Andy Warhol offerings, the standout was a “Mao” from 1973, showing its subject in a Ferrari-red Mao jacket, which sold to a telephone bidder for £7,586,500 ($12,473,723; est. £5.5-7.5/$9.01-12.29 million). One of 28 Maos that Warhol made in this work’s 50-by-42-inch format, it last sold at Sotheby’s London in June 2000 for £421,500.

In a different stylistic universe, Japanese action painter Kazuo Shiraga’s brawny “Kosha,” measuring 86 by 114 inches and resembling a cranked up Jackson Pollock in places, sold for £1,258,500 ($2,069,226; est. £900,000-1.2 million/$1.48-1.97 million).

“The room was electric,” auctioneer Barker said after the sale. “It felt really good up there.”

The week’s finale comes at Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary sale on Thursday, featuring a major Francis Bacon portrait, a Jeff Koons sculpture, and another grand Gerhard Richter.