A new Banksy mural appeared on a building in Bristol, England.
Banksy’s newest mural in Bristol, England. Photo by Geoff Caddick / AFP via Getty Images.
A new pandemic-themed Banksy work has appeared on the side of a house in Bristol, England. The mural, which features an elderly woman in the midst of a sneeze so forceful that her dentures have flown out, was claimed by the artist in an Instagram post on Thursday with the caption “Aachoo!!”
The mural caps off a busy year for the famed street artist. In May, he unveiled a painting in honor of frontline healthcare workers at the Southampton General Hospital in the U.K. The painting hung in the hospital’s lobby until the fall, when it was auctioned off to raise money for the country’s National Health Service (NHS). In August, the artist revealed he had chartered and staffed a rescue boat, the Louise Michel, to patrol the Mediterranean in order to help North African refugees complete their journey to Europe.
The market for Banksy’s work, meanwhile, continued to expand. At a Sotheby’s auction in July, the artist’s 2017 triptych Mediterranean sea view 2017 sold for £2.2 million ($2.8 million), nabbing the second-highest result for a Banksy work at auction. That result was soon beaten by the sale of the artist’s Claude Monet riff Show Me the Monet (2005), which sold at Sotheby’s in October for £7.5 million ($9.7 million) and now holds the second-highest title. Banksy was also the second-most inquired-on artist on Artsy, coming only behind fellow street art extraordinaire KAWS.
