A rare masterpiece from Andy Warhol’s celebrated Death And Disaster series is expected to fetch more than 80 million dollars (£69 million) at auction.

The titan of pop art, who was said to be fixated on themes of death and mortality, printed 19 images of a fatal car crash in black and white tones to match the newspapers from which he drew inspiration creating White Disaster (White Car Crash 19 Times).

The 1963 piece is considered one of the most provocative and haunting artistic achievements of the 20th century and “arguably the most significant achievement of his career”, Sotheby’s auction house said.

The work, from a private collection where it has been for 25 years, is the first large painting from Warhol’s Death And Disaster series to come to auction since 2013 when Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) made 105.4 million dollars (£91 million) – a record for the artist at the time.

Prior to that, the only other work from the series to come to auction in the past 15 years also set an auction record for the artist in 2007 when Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car) sold for 71.7 million dollars (£62 million).

Measuring 12ft tall, it is the largest of all Warhol’s single-panel Car Crash works.

Speaking about the piece in 2013, British art historian Sir John Richardson said: “I see Andy always at the eye of the storm. The eye of the storm where there is stillness, and all around is disaster.

“Here was Andy at the centre of all this horror: the horror of modern life. Yet Andy was unaffected. He felt this, he sensed this, but he wasn’t one of the victims of it. By virtue of being in the eye of the storm, he could see it.

“The whole repetition of Andy’s imagery stems from the fact that he was Catholic. He went to church, he went to confession, he had to do 10 Hail Marys, 20 Ave Marias, and all this is reflected in the way his imagery is repeated again and again and again.”

White Disaster (White Car Crash 19 Times) will appear in a public exhibition for the first time in more than 15 years when it goes on public view in a pre-sale exhibition on November 4 and it will star as the highlight of Sotheby’s New York Contemporary Art Evening Auction on November 16.