Banksy to donate sale of artwork to Palestinian hospital

[RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories] British street artist Banksy is to donate the proceeds from the auction of one of his works, valued at over US$1 million, to a Palestinian hospital, one of his collaborators told AFP on Monday.

Titled "Mediterranean Sea View 2017," the work is to be auctioned Tuesday at Sotheby's in London, said Wissam Salsaa, director of the Walled Off Hotel which Banksy helped set up in 2017 in the Palestinian city of Bethlehem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The work comprises three oil paintings depicting views of raging seas and shoreline littered with orange life jackets and buoys, alluding "to the lives lost at sea during the European migrant 'crisis' of the 2010s", according to the description on the Sotheby's site.

The work, which used to hang in the entry of the hotel, is valued at US$1.5 million, according to Salsaa.

All the proceeds will go to a hospital in Bethlehem to build an acute stroke unit and buy children's rehabilitation equipment, Sotheby's said.

In May, a new work by Banksy paying tribute to Britain's health service and medics battling the novel coronavirus pandemic was installed in a hospital in southern England.

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It will later be auctioned to raise money for charities connected to the country's National Health Service (NHS).

The artist, whose true identity remains a secret, has unveiled multiple works in Bethlehem, home of his Walled Off Hotel where all rooms overlook a concrete section of the barrier built by Israel to cut off the West Bank from its territory.

Israel says the five-metre (16-foot) concrete barrier is needed to protect it from attack by assailants coming from the West Bank.

AFP