A painting by British street artist Banksy putting caregivers in the spotlight was snatched up at auction on Tuesday in London at 16.75 million pounds (19.45 million euros), a record amount for the artist who will be donated to the British health service.
Initially estimated at between 2.5 and 3.5 million pounds (2.9 and 4 million euros), this black and white work, titled
Game Changer
("This has changed the deal"), was finally sold. at Christie's more than four times the price, far surpassing the previous record of Banksy, whose painting
The Parliament of the Apes
sold in 2019 for 9.9 million pounds (11.5 million euros at the current rate) .
Amount paid to caregivers and patients
At the end of a breathtaking auction session, the auctioneer hailed an
"extraordinary success"
and a
"historic moment"
.
“Thank you very much of course to Banksy for this incredible gesture
,” he said, recalling that
“most of the proceeds will be used for the welfare of staff and patients at Southampton Hospital”
, in the south of England.
Read also: Banksy claims in a video the authorship of the graffiti on the walls of an English prison in Reading
Sold on the day the UK celebrates the anniversary of its first confinement (out of three to date),
Game Changer
depicts a little boy who, after throwing his Batman and Superman figures in the trash, plays with a doll of nurse wearing a mask and cape.
Banksy initially donated this work to Southampton Hospital in May 2020, during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.
A reproduction will be installed there.
In recent years, the enigmatic contemporary artist from Bristol, with an unknown identity, has kept contemporary art circles spellbound with his emblematic causes (migrants, opposition to Brexit, denunciation of the Islamists) and has driven the auctions into a panic. last years.
The partial and provocative self-destruction of her canvas in October 2018, just after its acquisition at Sotheby's in London by a collector for more than a million euros, had already created a global buzz.
"Joyful impact"
For Christie's,
Game changer
constitutes a
"personal tribute to those who continue to reverse the course of the pandemic"
.
"
Banksy's
Game Changer
was a light of hope for the staff and patients of Southampton Hospital and the artist wanted to auction it off for the benefit of the NHS,"
the national health service explained in upstream of the sale Katharine Arnold, co-director, responsible for post-war and contemporary art in Europe at Christie's.
Ms Arnold stressed that the work
"pays tribute to the strength and resilience"
of NHS workers.
A beloved institution of the British, the free public service has undergone significant savings measures for a decade, before finding itself in the turmoil of the Covid-19 crisis, which has killed more than 126,000 in the United Kingdom, the worst record in Europe.
Read also: United Kingdom: one year after the first confinement, a minute of silence in memory of the dead from Covid-19
When giving the work to caregivers last May, the artist left them a note saying:
“Thank you for everything you do.
I hope that will brighten up the place a bit, even if it's only in black and white. ”
According to Paula Head, Managing Director of Southampton Hospital, Banksy's gift
"made a huge difference to the morale of the hospital and the people who work there"
,
"all staff"
describing
"the joyous impact"
that the work had on them.
In a video published in early March, the hospital staff also thanked the street artist for his gift.
The work was auctioned on Tuesday as part of a larger sale dedicated to 20th century artists, including a self-portrait of the American painter Jean-Michel Basquiat (sold for more than 9 million pounds) , as well as paintings by French artists Pierre Soulages and Jean Dubuffet.