Oscar De La Hoya, Ricky Hatton, Juan Manuel Marquez, Sugar Shane Mosley, Miguel Cotto and Canelo Alvarez are among the boxers whom welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather has defeated in the ring since 2007.
Their images preen, jab and hook across a mural sized painting, the largest ever by sports action painter and Laguna Beach gallerist David Hobrecht. “The painting chronicles much of Floyd’s career over the years and shows him at different ages,” Hobrecht said.
Executed in a black, white and gray palette and rendered in a dry-brush technique using charcoal and pastel, the unframed painting measuring a whopping 4×12 feet will serve as a backdrop at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas where Mayweather is scheduled to fight Filipino champion Manny Pacquiao on May 2.
Originally commissioned by Mayweather Promotions, it is tentatively valued at $100,000. It will be on display between April 27 and May 4.
Besides images of Mayweather and his opponents, the composition contains physical items from Mayweather’s gym, such as pieces of ring matting and ropes, parts of speed bags, a jump rope and boxing paraphernalia. “It’s going to be cut up and inserted very subtly,” explained Hobrecht, cataloging the piece as the largest he has ever done. “It’s been hardcore, seven days a week for two months. There are 600 hours in the painting, at least. But it’s fitting because this is the fight of the century…the champ deserves an epic-scale work of art commemorating it.”
Fans on smaller budgets will be able to buy smaller prints of the work, some also enhanced with Mayweather artifacts. They range from $10,000 from a series of 10 prints to $1,000 for a print from a series of 500, $500 from a series of 1,000, with the small $100 prints remaining an open ended production.
Mayweather has won 47 fights, lost none so far and competed for the U.S. during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, winning a bronze medal.
Hobrecht, 43, has been a full-time professional painter since 2008 and established Hobrecht Sports Art in Laguna Beach in 2011.
“I went to business school at USC and then taught myself to make art. It’s priceless to be an artist with a business degree. Art gets better the more you do it and the degree helps you sell it,” he said.
