Madonna will donate $7.2 million to promoting girls’ education rights in the Middle East and South Asia, from the sale of a Cubist painting by French artist, Fernand Léger. The keen art collector and international star bought Léger’s “Trois Femmes à la Table Rouge,” in 1990, reported The Independent on Thursday.
The piece, painted in 1921, was sold at a Sotheby’s sale of Impressionist and Modern art in New York on Wednesday.
Madonna said she wished to auction the work to “trade something valuable for something invaluable;” all proceeds will go to her Ray of Light Foundation which supports education projects aimed at young girls in the Middle East and South Asia.
“Thanks to everyone who helped make it happen! Art equals Revolution!” Madonna wrote on her Facebook page on Wednesday. The post was accompanied by a smiling picture of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl and education activist who was shot by members of the Taliban last year.
“I cannot accept a world where women or girls are wounded, shot or killed for either going to school or teaching in girls’ schools. We don’t have time to be complacent,” she said in a press statement last month.
“I hope to make many girls smile like Malala all around the world!” Madonna wrote.
The singer is known for her dedication to charitable causes, she previously supported UNICEF, Amnesty International and Children In Need, among other organizations.
Despite this, her charity in Malawi recently came under fire, directed at Madonna by the government’s education minister, Eunice Kazembe.
“[Raising Malawi] have said they have built ten schools in Malawi and on our side what we know is that she [Madonna] has built classrooms… these are not schools from our side and really that’s the essence of the difference between her side and the Malawi government,” Kaembe told media.
