The big picture: the world’s largest canvas painting sells for $62m

An artwork created from the world’s largest canvas painting has sold for $62m in Dubai, the second most expensive painting sold at auction by a living artist.

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.

The purity of intention that only children have did something really powerful.

—  Sacha Jafri

Jafri’s aim had been to raise $30m for charities by auctioning the 1,800m² of canvas in sections, but Abdoune put in a bid for the entire work.

Abdoune said he was 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 UAE 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 $90.3m.

In March, a digital artwork sold for nearly $70m in the first sale by a major auction house of a piece of art that does not exist in physical form.

– Reuters