On Friday, an anonymous donor put his canvas up for sale at an online auction house in London. CND Soldiers by the British artist. The amount raised will be used to treat the children of the Ohmatdyt hospital, located in the heart of the Ukrainian capital.
The work CND Soldiers by Banksy was put up for sale by its owner, who did not disclose his name, to raise funds for the Ohmatdyt Children’s Hospital in kyiv. The sale takes place on the MyArtBroker auction house website in the form of a “silent auction”for a floor price of 20,000 pounds sterling (24,000 euros) doubled in just a few hours.
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“Despite active shelling and airstrikes from Russia, Ohmatdyt specialists remain in Kyiv to protect and care for children who are taken to hospital”salutes the British house MyArtBroker in a press release. “Thanks to the selfless work of the hospital, patients receive timely medical care and the funds raised will ensure that this important work continues”she continues.
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The sale of the work has been online since Friday, March 18. For one of the managers of the British house, it is already bearing fruit. “We are honored by the incredible generosity shown in a flurry of offers over the weekend, doubling the starting offer in just a few hours. We are now only accepting bids over £40,000.”said Joey Syer, one of the operations professionals at MyArtBroker, whose entire commission will also be distributed to Kyiv Children’s Hospital.
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Made in 2005, the work depicts two soldiers in combat gear, one watching his back with a submachine gun, the other holding a brush in his hands painting a peace sign on a wall in red. Originally, this sign symbolized the British campaign for nuclear disarmament (CND) of 1957. According to the specialized site Banksy Explained, “the satirical juxtaposition of armed soldiers and the peace sign calls into question the role of the military in maintaining peace”including the latter, painted in dripping red, “evokes the bloodshed of war”.
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This is not the first time that a work by Banksy has been the subject of a charity sale in recent years. Indeed, in May 2020, his painting Game changer , which represents a boy in overalls brandishing the doll of a super-nurse and abandoning those of Batman and Spider-Man, was sold for 14.4 million pounds sterling. More recently, in his hometown of Bristol, the artist auctioned off his t-shirts “Anticolonialists” reports the Italian newspaper Republic . An initiative whose money was used to finance the legal costs of the four defendants tried for having destroyed the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston.