Banksy triptych raises $3 million for Palestinian hospital

A triptych of a Mediterranean shipwreck donated by British street artist Banksy raised nearly $3 million on Tuesday at a Sotheby's auction held to raise funds for a Palestinian hospital in the West Bank.

The trio of highly stylised paintings by the mysterious artist shows orange life vests and an oar washed up on a rocky shore.

They first appeared in the Walled Off Hotel that Banksy helped set up in the Israeli-occupied city of Bethlehem in 2017.

The "Mediterranean Sea View 2017" was seen as Bansky's stern judgement on Europe's hesitant response to the migrant crisis that peaked some five years ago.

Tens of thousands are thought to have died as European countries on the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas turned away people fleeing violent conflicts across North Africa and the Middle East.

"This work juxtaposes an historic fine art genre with grim contemporaneity," Sotheby's said in its sales listing for the work. "Though posing as eighteenth or nineteenth-century paintings of the 'Natural Sublime', the present work undermines and subverts the viewer's expectations to broach a difficult contemporary issue."

It officially raised £2,235,000 ($2.9 million, 2.5 million euros) – well shy of the record £9.9 million set for a Banksy in October when his "Devolved Parliament" painting went under the hammer in the middle of Britain's Brexit struggle with the EU.

Banksy donated the triptych to raise money for a new stroke unit and to buy children's rehabilitation equipment at the Bethlehem hospital. (AFP)