London, Oct 4 (IANS) Anonymous British street artist Banksy’s painting showing the UK’s House of Commons overrun with chimpanzees has sold at an auction for 9.9 pounds ($12 million).
The 13 ft wide artwork titled “Devolved Parliament” was painted by the anonymous Bristol artist in 2009, reports the BBC.
Expected to fetch between 1.5 million and 2 million pounds, it sold for nearly five times its estimate at Sotheby’s in London on Thursday.
Banksy reacted on Instagram, saying it was a “record price for a Banksy painting” and “shame I didn’t still own it”.
Sotheby’s tweeted the painting had sold “to applause at 9,879,500 pounds – nine times its previous record – after a 13 minute bidding battle”.
The auction house said: “Regardless of where you sit in the Brexit debate, there’s no doubt that this work is more pertinent now than it has ever been.”
“Devolved Parliament” is the artist’s biggest known work on canvas.
The auction took place a year after Banksy himself intervened in a Sotheby’s auction, when his artwork “Girl with Balloon” self-destructed as the gavel came down to become the newly titled “Love is in the Bin”.
–IANS
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