World’s largest painting sells for $62m in Dubai
Seven months, 1,065 paintbrushes, 6,300 litres of paint and $62 million – Sacha Jafri has pulled off one of the art world’s greatest feats with the sale of his record-breaking canvas The Journey of Humanity.
From April until September, the British contemporary artist used the ballroom of Dubai’s Atlantis, The Palm, to make the world’s largest art canvas – officially certified by Guinness World Records – measuring 1,800 square metres and spanning more than two football fields placed end to end.
The finished piece, which has been on display at the hotel over the past few weeks, was cut into 70 pieces and was set to be sold across four auctions this year with the hopes of raising $30m for charity.
However, the piece was sold in its entirety to Andre Abdoune, chief executive of Altius Gestion International Holding, during an auction in Dubai on Monday, for a staggering $62m.
Video footage from the auction, held in the room where the artwork was created, shows the moment the hammer came down on the most expensive artwork ever sold in the UAE.
“It was always my dream to do something amazing for my children, for my father,” Abdoune said. “I talked with Sacha, and I discovered the investment and love he put into this painting was so amazing.
“All my life I was aiming to help children. When I was a child, I had nothing to eat. Now I have something to eat. We all have to do something. Every dollar can mean something. If we do it together, we give hope to these children and their future.”
The funds will be split between Dubai Cares, Unicef, Unesco and Global Gift Foundation, as well as the Ministry of Tolerance and Coexistence, and the Ministry of Education, in the UAE.
One of the programmes to benefit will be Unicef’s Giga project, an initiative launched last year alongside the International Telecommunication Union with the aim of “connecting every school to the internet and every young person to information, opportunity and choice”.
Jafri, who lives in Dubai, spent 20 hours a day creating the work. To help fill the canvas, the artist invited children from around the world to send in their drawings themed around the topics of isolation and connection, which were then used for the first layer of the painting.
The final version contains more than 300 layers of paint. The finished artwork was unveiled on February
25 by Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak, Minister of Tolerance and Coexistence, and Dr Tariq Al Gurg, chief executive of Dubai Cares.
Jafri is no stranger to using his work to raise funds for charity, having raised more than $60m already over the course of his two-decadelong career. He has acted as a long-time ambassador for the Global Gift Foundation, which is run by Maria Bravo and Eva Longoria. The artist’s work has previously been auctioned to benefit the Start Foundation in Dubai, La Pegasus Polo Centre in India and the mental health initiative Heads Together, run by the UK’s Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, among other causes.