Esref Armagan with his Volvo S60 painting

Mississauga, Ontario – A painting of the all-new Volvo S60 by a blind artist has sold for $3,050 on eBay, the highest price ever for an art piece sold for charity on the online auction site.

The painting was purchased by a Volvo dealer in Quebec. All proceeds will go a Canadian-based charity, the World Blind Union, which represents more than 150 million blind and impaired-vision people in 177 member countries. In all, the painting received 52 bids.

Turkish artist Esref Armagan created the painting after he became the first outsider invited to Göteborg, Sweden to examine the all-new S60, and became familiar with it through touch.

“I’m really impressed with the artist, and with the video, which we couldn’t stop watching,” said buyer Rachel Léonard, general director of Volvo de Quebéc. “I figured it would be good for a dealer to have it, and as long as it was a dealer, I thought it might as well be me.”

The Blind Preview, a film documenting Armagan’s work on the painting, can be viewed at Facebook.

The new Volvo S60 will have its world premiere at the Geneva Motor Show in Switzerland in March 2010.