Damien Hirst’s Leonardo DiCaprio Portrait Reaps Over $1M For Charity At Cannes
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A colorful painting of Leonardo DiCaprio by Damien Hirst has fetched a rather titanic sum of over £1 million—about US$1.3 million, according to Artnet News—at a charity auction for AIDS relief.
A spinoff of Hirst’s famed Spin Paintings series, Leonardo DiCaprio Looking Away Painting (2016) features the star’s face splashed with bright pink, yellow, orange, and green paint in a circular motion. It was sold off to benefit amfAR, a leading nonprofit for AIDS research and HIV prevention, during a gala dinner at Cannes.
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The large 111 x 84-inch artwork, signed by both DiCaprio and Hirst, was donated by art collector Christian Levitt, who said he originally acquired the piece at a party hosted by DiCaprio in St Tropez for €600,000 in 2016.
The new buyer has remained anonymous. The bigger picture is that the event raised US$17 million for amfAR that night, with prized artworks by stars like Robert DeNiro and Claire Tabouret, and the first Aston Martin DB12 customer car, going under the hammer for a good cause.
[via InsideHook and Artnet News, images via various sources]
