One of the paintings in the triptych View of the Mediterranean Sea, 2017 by Banksy, in London on July 23, 2020. – Guy Bell // SIPA
As very often with Banksy, more than artistic the message is above all political. A triptych by the street artist on the migration crisis has just been sold for 2.2 million pounds (2.4 million euros) at Sotheby’s in London. The money will go to a children’s hospital in Bethlehem, West Bank.
Table Of Contents
Widely outdated estimates
The three oil paintings that make up View of the Mediterranean Sea, 2017 far exceeded estimates, between £ 800,000 and £ 1.2 million. To make his work, Banksy “took three old romantic canvases that depicted 19th century seascapes”, which he then sprinkled with “life jackets or abandoned buoys,” Sotheby’s explained. With this triptych, the artist “juxtaposes in his inimitable style a historical artistic genre with a contemporary political question – the tragic death of thousands of migrants who tried to cross the Mediterranean to reach the European Union”.
Since its creation in 2017, the work has been exhibited in Bethlehem, in the hotel “The Walled Off” opened by the artist himself, where all the rooms face directly on the wall erected by Israel in the West Bank. Banksy announced that he would donate all the profits to the city’s BASR hospital, to finance a new stroke care unit and the purchase of equipment for the rehabilitation of children.
A regular on the migration issue
The contemporary artist regularly addresses the issue of the migration crisis. In 2015, he painted a portrait of Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple and the son of a Syrian migrant, on the wall of a refugee camp in Calais. He also made in 2019, at the Venice Biennale, the stencil of a child in a life jacket, holding a pink distress rocket.
