Ghanaian artist El Anatsui led sales at Frieze New York’s 2026 fair, one of the world’s most prestigious contemporary art showcases.
LuwVor I — an aluminum, copper, and wire sculpture — sold for $2.2 million, more than double the next highest seller at the fair.
El Anatsui’s MivEvi III, which is made from bottle caps and copper wire, also sold for $1.9 million.
The 82-year-old is one of the continent’s preeminent artists, tackling the transatlantic slave trade through his frequent use of bottle caps, which come from liquor that European colonizers imported into Africa and exchanged for enslaved people.
“It’s like creating joy out of gloom,” El Anatsui told The New York Times in March.