New York, .- A drawing work of Nelson Mandela Nobel Peace Prize was sold on Thursday for more than $ 110,000 in an auction held at the New York Bonhams offices, which had initially given him a value of between $ 60,000 and $ 90,000.
The piece is a drawing of the door of his prison cell in Robben Island, where Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison for his efforts to end the racist apartheid regime, and reached exactly $ 112,575 after taxes and fees were included. commissions.
Made in wax pastels in yellow and purple, was painted in 2002, three years after retiring from political life after deciding to limit his presidency of South Africa to a term.
“When my father retired as president, he did not have much to do, I think for him, art was a good way to express himself or to assimilate his past and, I would not like to talk about ghosts, but simply accept his whole life”, explained Mandela’s eldest daughter, Makaziwe Mandela, in statements to Bonhams.
The work, sold at an auction of modern and contemporary African art, is part of a series of sketches on Robben Island that he painted in 2002, under the tuition of his art teacher Varenka Paschke, who helped him in the composition and application of the colors.
In total, Mandela completed 22 sketches of images that had meaning for him, both symbolic and emotional, during his imprisonment on Robben Island.
Ten of them were reproduced in his book of lithographs “My Robben Island” of 2002 and “Reflections of Robben Island” of 2003, although the one offered at auction was not one of them, which remained in the collection of the Mandela family.
“Today, when I think of Robben Island, I see it as a celebration of my struggle and a symbol of the best qualities of the human spirit, rather than a monument to brutal tyranny and the oppression of apartheid,” wrote the former South African president in 2002. .
The 5th cell of Robben Island in which Mandela was imprisoned has been visited by presidents, prime ministers and prominent personalities from all over the world, among them the exmandatarios of the United States. Barack Obama in 2013 and Bill Clinton in 1998. (EFE)
