Nelson Mandela paintings of life in prison to be sold as NFTs

The contrast between the tiny austere cell on Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in jail, and the infinite diversity of the digital world could not be greater.

But the two will come together next month when the first non-fungible tokens (NFTs) of artwork by the former South African president and anti-apartheid hero are sold against the backdrop of a booming global digital art market.

My Robben Island consists of five vivid watercolours painted by Mandela after he stood down as president in 1999, plus The Motivation, a handwritten text that explains his visualisation of the harsh island prison. All six works bear his signature.

Sales of NFTs have rocketed in the past couple of years, fuelled by young buyers who have made fortunes from cryptocurrencies and other technologies. An NFT titled Everydays: the First 5,000 Days by Mike Winkelmann, the digital artist known as Beeple, sold for a record $69m last March.