Madiba corpse art fetches R450 000
An anonymous collector has paid this for a painting the ANC described as ‘witchcraft’.
An anonymous art collector has shelled out nearly half a million rands for a painting the ANC once described as “witchcraft”.
Yiull Damaso’s The Night Watch!, which he revealed to the public in 2010 and is based on Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp, depicts an autopsy of Nelson Mandela’s corpse.
Onlookers featured in the painting included Jacob Zuma, Cyril Ramaphosa, Desmond Tutu, FW de Klerk, Thabo Mbeki, Helen Zille and Nkosi Johnson, the child Aids activist who died aged 12, as the character of Dr Tulp.
Mandela was at the time still alive but very frail and sickly. The painting drew criticism from the ANC, which described it as “disrespectful and an insult and an affront to values of our society”.
“In African society, it is a foreign act of ubuthakathi (bewitch) to kill a living person,” wrote ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu at the time. “And this so-called work of art is also racist.”
Damaso subsequently received death threats, and the outrage made international headlines.
Eight years later, he has packed up his painting and shipped it to an anonymous buyer, who paid R450 000.