USA/FILE: Banksy painting showing a Nazi staring at a landscape fetches $610,000 (USD) for a New York charity for AIDS patients and the homeless

Record ID: 564720

  • Title: USA/FILE: Banksy painting showing a Nazi staring at a landscape fetches $610,000 (USD) for a New York charity for AIDS patients and the homeless
  • Date: 1st November 2013
  • Summary: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (OCTOBER 8, 2013) (REUTERS) BANKSY ART ON STREET
  • Embargoed: 16th November 2013 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Usa
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Entertainment,General
  • Reuters ID: LVA7ALWJMHZIAOIXT6P4IEZVPXDU
  • Story Text: Bidding on a painting by graffiti artist Banksy that shows a Nazi staring at a landscape reached $610,000 (380,605 pounds) on Thursday (October 31) at the close of an auction by a New York charity for AIDS patients and the homeless.
    The anonymous British artist, who has been surprising New Yorkers with artwork around the city throughout the month of October, on Tuesday (October 29) dropped off the painting, titled "The banality of the banality of evil," at a New York thrift store, which promptly put it up for auction online.
    Housing Works, which displayed the painting in the front window of its thrift store in Manhattan, has cautioned that the final bid would need to be verified. The bid for the oil painting, which rose by $300,000 in the final four hours, was announced on the charity's Twitter feed.
    The painting is a landscape that Banksy altered by adding a uniformed Nazi soldier sitting on a bench.
    Housing Works employees said the painting had received mostly positive reactions.
    The highest price ever paid for an art work by Banksy, who has kept his identity a secret since his 1993 debut, was $1.87 million for another modified painting at a 2008 charity auction at Sotheby's. That work, "Keep it spotless," was a Damian Hirst painting featuring neat rows of multicolored polka dots, over which Banksy painted a woman wearing a maid's uniform and holding a dust pan.
    During Banksy's one-month residency in New York, artwork popped up in unexpected places and attracted flocks of fans.
    The pieces included stenciled rats gratified on a Brooklyn building wall and the large statues of McDonald's Corp advertising icon Ronald McDonald getting a shoe shine displayed in the Bronx.
    Earlier in October, Banksy set up a stand in New York's Central Park where an associate sold signed original Banksy paintings for $60 each.
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