One of Cy Twombly's scribbled "blackboard" works was sold in New York on Wednesday by the Los Angeles attorney Sydney Irmas and his wife, Audrey, and proceeds will help fund a new events center in the collectors' city. It led a solid sale totaling $295 million for 54 lots and ended Sotheby's fall auction series of Impressionist, modern, contemporary and post-war art that hit the $1-billion mark total.

Twombly's 1968 oil and crayon canvas "Untitled (New York City)" fetched an artist auction record of $70.5 million in Sotheby's Contemporary Art sale.

The canvas was sold to benefit the Audrey Irmas Foundation for Social Justice, stated Sotheby's. The foundation is expected to set aside $30 million from the sale to help fund the 55,000-square-foot Audrey Irmas Pavilion at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, which will be designed by Rem Koolhaas's Office for Metropolitan Architecture, reports the LA Times.