Saudi artist Mohammed Al-Saleem broke a world record for Saudi artists at this week's Sotheby's 20th Century Art/Middle East sale in London. His 1986 work - inspired by Riyadh's skyline radiating out from the desert - fetched $1.1 million, seven times its pre-sale estimate, and the world record for a Saudi artist at auction.
This untitled work from 1986, according to auction manager Alexandra Roy, "essentially banishes form and landscape, reimagining the distant dunes of the desert horizon through contained patches of colour, which emerge as if fighting against each other on the surface of the image."