A huge painting by Leonardo DiCaprio by Damien Hirt sold at a charity auction for $1.3 million.
by Hirst Beautiful painting of Leonardo DiCaprio looking into the distance was painted in 2016 and is an adaptation of Hirst’s famous film Rotation Paintings from the 1990s in which he sprayed and dripped paint from the top of a ladder onto rotating canvases. The artwork, signed by both the famous actor and artist, is an energetic swirl of pink, yellow and green with DiCaprio captured in a deep blue silhouette.
The piece was donated by collector Christian Levett and sold at the amfAR gala in Cannes, France on May 25. Fundraising for AIDS research has raised more than 500 million dollars since its launch in 1985, this edition taking place at a time when the world of celebrity arrives on the Côte d’Azur for the Cannes film festival. This year’s event was hosted by Queen Latifah and featured a host of models and celebrities, including Eva Longoria, Heidi Klum, Rebel Wilson, Alek Wek, Orlando Bloom and Kate Beckinsale. It also featured performances from Gladys Knight, Halsey and Adam Lambert.
“Charity auctions can also be an indicator of the state of the art market”, Simon de Pury, the amfAR gala auctioneer, told Artnet News. “I started the auction at €100,000. Multiple bids from all over the marquee and by telephone pushed the price up fairly quickly to €1.2 million. This is the first time I have seen the same work raise first a substantial amount for one charity and then for another.
Simon De Pury leads an auction at the annual amfAR gala in Cannes. Photo: Patricia de Melo Moreira via Getty Images.
Levett originally acquired the 111″ x 84″ artwork at Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation Gala and Auction for €600,000 in 2016. “Happy to have donated one of my Damien Hirsts last night to raise funds at the Amfar Charity Dinner,” Levett wrote in an Instagram post. Despite the success, it trails the record price of $15 million paid by Hirst in 2014 for Gone but not forgottena golden woolly mammoth skeleton.
In total, the amfAR gala raised a total of $17 million. The best batch was the first Aston Martin DB12 client car, which sold for $1.6 million, with the auction also including works by Claire Tabouret, Cecily Brown, Andres Valencia and Robert DeNiro.
The sale of the DiCaprio-centric artwork comes following Hirst’s launch of a digital form of his Rotation Paintings early 2023. The Beautiful Paintings guided collectors to an online dashboard where they could create their own work by selecting up to 12 colors, one of 25 rotation styles, and one of four canvas sizes. Collectors could have the work produced as a physical piece, a NFT, or both. He sold 5,508 paintings and generated over $20 million in sales.
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