It may look like the work of a demented five-year-old let loose in a paint factory - but this is the most expensive painting in the world.

Jackson Pollock's 'No5, 1948' was sold for £73million yesterday by Hollywood mogul David Geffen to a Mexican financier.

The price just pipped the previous record of £70million paid by cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder for Gustav Klimt's Adele Bloch-Bauer I last June.

The latest deal is said to have been brokered by Sotheby's.

Buyer David Martinez is obsessively private but is known to have snapped up other pricey works of modern and contemporary art.

He recently bought a New York apartment for £28million.

The Pollock is one of the US artist's classic 'drip' works and is made up of splashes of browns and yellows. It measures 1.2m wide by 2.4m high.

Last month, Geffen sold two other 20th-century paintings - a Jasper Johns and a Willem de Kooning - for £75million.

Media analysts have speculated that Geffen is trying to raise cash for a potential bid for the Los Angeles Times newspaper. The tycoon began his career in the entertainment industry in the mailroom of the William Morris Agency.

After working as an agent, Geffen left to found Asylum Records in 1971. In the 1980s, he started Geffen Records and branched out into film production. He joined with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg under the Dreamworks banner in 1994.