The sale offers a view into an alternative art world where famous names rub shoulders with reclusive billionaires to raise money for charity.
Inside a ballroom at the Atlantis Hotel on a manmade archipelago in Dubai, British artist Sacha Jafri made history. On March 24, he sold his work The Journey of Humanity for $62 million, making it the second most expensive painting ever sold at auction by a living artist. The price isn’t the only grandiose part: at 17,000 square feet, the equivalent of four NBA-regulation basketball courts, the painting has claimed the Guinness World Record for the largest art canvas.
New details only serve to make the sale—which was sold to benefit children around the world affected by the pandemic—appear more extraordinary.
The buyer of the work, French-Algerian businessman Andre Abdoune, plans to build a museum in Dubai to house it. Sources tell Artnet News that the Dubai government is expected to provide land for the institution, although neither Jafri nor the government would confirm by press time.
The artist says he’s raised over $130 million for charity to date, including the sale of The Journey of Humanity as well as two works for approximately $8 million at a Dubai auction last month to support a government initiative to deliver 100 million meals during the month of Ramadan.
The entrepreneur intends for his future museum to be similar to the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas, a place to contemplate art and human rights. In addition to housing Jafri’s Guinness World Record-breaking masterpiece, the space will host dormitories where children with special needs, refugees, and orphans can take art workshops with Jafri.