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Gallery worker looks at Banksy paintings
Photo: TOLGA AKMEN / AFP
An ironic reinterpretation of a Monet painting by the British artist Banksy has been auctioned for 7.6 million pounds (8.4 million euros).
The oil painting entitled "Show Me the Monet" had previously been valued at three to five million pounds, the auction house Sotheby's announced on Wednesday.
It is the second highest auction price ever achieved for a work by the artist.
A year ago Banksy's oil painting, which shows the British Parliament populated by monkeys, paid a record £ 9.9 million.
Banksy painted "Show Me the Monet" in 2005, it was shown as part of a collection called "The Crude Oils" in his second gallery exhibition.
The painting takes up the impressionist masterpiece "The Japanese Bridge" by Claude Monet and transforms the idyll of the garden in Giverny into a modern, illegal garbage dump.
A shopping trolley and an orange traffic cone bob in Monet's lily pond.
"Always prescient as the voice of protest and social contradiction, Banksy sheds light on society's disregard for the environment in favor of the wasteful excesses of consumption," said Alex Branczik, contemporary art director at Sotheby's in Europe.
Banksy has become world famous as a graffiti artist, but his identity is only known to a handful of confidants.
His works often have political messages.
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