Bristol artist Banksy hoping to raise £1.2 million for children's charity through sale of artwork
Bristol artist Banksy is hoping to raise £1.2million for a hospital in Bethlehem through the sale of one of his iconic artworks.
The auction is being held at Sotheby's tomorrow (Tuesday 28 July) where Banksy's triptych of artworks titled 'Mediterranean Sea View 2017' will be up for sale.
The three paintings are valued between £800,000 and £1.2million and the money raised will go towards a new stroke unit and children's rehabilitation equipment at the Bethlehem Arab Society for Rehabilitation.
Banksy's triptych carries a political message about the migrant crisis of the past decade. The work shows the sun shining over a seascape with life buoys and orange life jackets being washed on to the shore.
The three pieces were originally created for his Walled Off hotel in Bethlehem which looks out onto the barrier separating Israel from the Palestinian territories.
It opened in 2017 as a functioning hotel with the purpose of carrying Banksy's political statement.
Alex Branczik, Sotheby's head of contemporary art for Europe, said: “In Mediterranean Sea View 2017, Banksy corrupts three found oil paintings with his own witty reworkings to create something that, while posing as a 19th-century seascape, spotlights one of the burning issues of the 21st century.
“In Rembrandt to Richter, this triptych hangs in Sotheby's galleries alongside works by some of history's greatest landscape painters, including Bellotto, Van Goyen and Turner."