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The original painting, "The Journey of
Humanity" by British artist Sacha Jafri, holds the Guinness
World Record for the largest art canvas.
Painted on one large canvas on the ballroom floor of the
Atlantis hotel in Dubai over seven months of the coronavirus
pandemic, the canvas was split into 70 lots for sale.
They were all bought together by Andre Abdoune, a French
national living in Dubai who has a cryptocurrency business.
Jafri's aim had been to raise $30 million for charities by
auctioning the 1,800 square metres of canvas in sections, but
Abdoune put in a bid for the entire work.
Abdoune said he is planning a "second step" for the painting,
hoping to raise even more money for charity, without giving
further details. For now, he intends to leave the painting in
Dubai.
"The aim was always to change the lives of children around the
world and try and reconnect humanity," said Jafri, who
incorporated paintings in his work from children in more than
140 countries.
"The purity of intention that only children have, did something
really powerful," he said.
The charities set to benefit include UNICEF, UNESCO, Global Gift
Foundation, and Dubai Cares.
Jafri, who was in the United Arab Emirates when a coronavirus
lockdown was imposed, came up with the concept for the work with
themes of connection and isolation.
He used 1,065 paint brushes and 6,300 litres of paint.
The most expensive painting by a living artist sold at auction
was David Hockney's 1972 "Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two
Figures)" which in 2018 sold for $90.3 million.
In March, a digital artwork sold for nearly $70 million in the
first sale by a major auction house of a piece of art that does
not exist in physical form.
(Reporting by Abdelhadi Ramahi and Lisa Barrington, editing by
Ed Osmond)
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