Bids on This Banksy Art 'Escalated Quickly,' for a Cause

Proceeds from 'CND Soldiers,' which sold for $106K, will all go to Kyiv children's hospital
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 29, 2022 2:30 PM CDT
Banksy Art Sale Raises $106K for Kyiv Children's Hospital
The auctioned-off piece of art.   (MyArtBroker.com)

An unknown donor has sold off a piece of anti-war Banksy art, with the funds raised from the sale earmarked for Ukraine's largest children's hospital. The BBC reports that the UK artist's "CND Soldiers" was auctioned off for just north of $106,000, which will be funneled to the Okhmatdyt Children's Hospital in Kyiv. The medical center cares for seriously ill kids and those injured during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The artwork shows two troops painting on a wall the huge red symbol of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament—what most of us more commonly recognize as the peace sign.

The sale was executed by MyArtBroker.com, a London-based private art dealer that mainly buys and sells prints. The company's Charlotte Stewart tells Forbes that a donor who wished to stay anonymous wanted proceeds from the print to go toward helping those suffering in Ukraine. The MyArtBroker.com auction page for the artwork notes it was "subject to a flurry of bids" over a 10-day span, starting off at about $26,000 before things "escalated quickly."

Stewart tells Forbes that prints of this type usually go for between $20,000 and $30,000, but that the resulting bidding war for this piece likely resulted because interested parties recognized the money would be going toward a good cause. She notes that Banksy had nothing to do with the sale, though she suspects he'd be "very supportive." The funds raised "will make an enormous difference to the lives of staff, children, and their families in the weeks ahead," Stewart said, per the BBC. MyArtBroker.com notes it's not claiming any portion of the money for the commission it usually collects. (More uplifting news stories.)

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