CANBERRA (Reuters) - A painting that hung for several years in a bank cafeteria has set a new record price for Australian aboriginal artwork, auctioneers Sotheby's said on Wednesday, confirming the ongoing boom for the genre.

The 1977 painting "Warlugulong" by the late Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri sold for A$2.4 million ($2.1 million) at an auction of aboriginal art in Australia's southern city of Melbourne.

"The painting was a really great painting," said the head of aboriginal art for Sotheby's, Tim Klingender.

"It deserved to make a really fantastic price and it made that price. It will be a while before this record is probably broken."

The sale more than doubled the previous record of A$1.06 million, paid in May for "Earth's Creation" by the late artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye, a vivid painting recounting a "Dreaming" creation myth.

"Warlugulong" is considered Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri's greatest work and depicts his vision of the world's creation.

The artist, who died in 2002, lived most of his life in his ancestral lands in remote central Australia, where he was a master of the Western Desert style of painting, using thousands of tiny dots to create traditional images.

But "Warlugulong" was not always so well valued. The artist earned A$1,200 for the work when it was first sold in 1977. It was later bought by Australia's Commonwealth Bank, where it ended up on display in a training centre staff cafeteria.

Its last owner, art dealer Hank Ebes, bought "Warlugulong" in 1996 for A$36,000 and has hung it in his home for the past decade.

Australia's aboriginal art industry was worth between A$100 to A$300 million, with about 6,000 artists in more than 80 remote communities, an Australian parliamentary report said in June.

The value of aboriginal art has risen 40 to 50 percent a year for a decade and mass-produced fake aboriginal paintings were now entering the market to cash in on the boom, the inquiry said.

The latest auction sold 286 aboriginal art works for a total of A$8.2 million.