Muhammad Ali artworks sell for nearly $1 million, fetching multiples of presale estimates
A rare collection of drawings, sketches and paintings by the late champion boxer sold at auction
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More than two dozen art works went up for auction at Bonhams in New York on Oct. 5, during which one of the most anticipated works, Sting Like a Bee, sold for US$425,000, more than 10 times its presale estimate, bbc.co.uk reports.
Born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. in 1942, Ali has been called one of the greatest ever athletes, but he was also an activist, poet — and artist.
Sting Like a Bee was painted during the filming of the movie Freedom Road in Mississippi in 1978 and is the only work to include a complete Muhammad Ali poem, Bonhams said. It says: “Ref! he did float like a butterfly and sting like a bee! Yes, if you were smart you run like me!” Ali often described his boxing style as floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee.
TCM Presents…It’s A Knockout! auction, Bonhams said Ali drew and painted all his life — encouraged by his father, who was a professional artist, and taking lessons from sports artist LeRoy Neiman. All but two of the 28 original paintings sold.
Ali’s friend, art collector Rodney Hilton Brown, said Ali drew his first three pictures for him after a fight in Boston in 1977.
“Muhammad Ali was a cultural icon who defined a generation,” Helen Hall, Bonhams’ director of Popular Culture, told the BBC before the sale. “His artwork depicts those subjects close to his heart: boxing, civil rights, religion and world peace and humanitarianism
Meanwhile, a 1979 red, white and blue painting on canvas, with the words “I Love You America,” sold for US$150,000, and a 1967 sketch in felt pen comparing Islam to Christianity fetched US$24,000, Reuters reported.
The total sale price of US$945,524 was three times more than had been expected.
In 2016, Ali died at the age of 74, decades after developing the degenerative brain disease Parkinson’s.
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