The painting "Self-Portrait Yellow-Pink" by Max Beckmann was auctioned in Berlin on Thursday evening for a record price of 20 million euros.
This makes it the most expensive work of art ever auctioned in Germany.
The painting is considered a masterpiece of German Expressionism, the estimate was 20 to 30 million euros, according to the Grisebach auction house.
It was previously privately owned and replaced Beckmann's "Die Ägypterin" as the most expensive work of art auctioned in this country, which was sold for 5.5 million euros in 2018.
"No comparable work has been offered on the German auction market since 1945," Grisebach expert Micaela Kapitzky told the AFP news agency before the auction.
Beckmann's work of art opened the winter auctions of the famous auction house.
It is hoped that further high proceeds will come from other famous paintings, such as those by Otto Dix, Max Liebermann or Egon Schiele and Wassily Kandinsky.
Beckmann painted the now sold work in 1943 while in exile in the Netherlands, where he had fled after the National Socialists took power in Germany.
He gave the picture to his wife Mathilde, called Quappi, who kept it until her death in 1986.
It was then part of a Swiss collection and was not seen again by the public until the 1990s.
In 1996, the Pels-Leusden gallery in Berlin sold it to a private buyer for “a sum in the region of a few million marks”.
Born in 1884, the painter is considered one of the most important artists of the 20th century, and the value of his works of art has exploded in recent decades.
His painting "Hell of the Birds", which is one of his most important anti-Nazi statements, was auctioned at Christie's in London in 2017 for 41 million euros at the time - never before has a work of art of German Expressionism paid so much.
Beckmann died in New York in 1950.