David Bowie’s collage DHead XLVI: portrait of an unidentified person… and the characteristic Bowie signature on the back
Updated on 25 June 2021
❚ A PAINTING BY SUPERSTAR DAVID BOWIE was found last summer in a thrift store for household goods and bought for just five dollars. Today it was put up for auction online and its top estimate of £7,200 was soon exceeded by four times that amount [19 June update]! After more than a week of bidding it sold on 24 June for £63,269 – a nine-fold increase on the upper estimate. The Canadian auction house hosting the online sale has not been able to identify the subject who is likely to have been among Bowie’s circle of friends during the Ziggy Stardust era as well as the mid-1990s when the painting was made. Take a guess and mail contact [a t] shapersofthe80s.com if you know who the friend might be. (Early guesses by a former UK Blitz Kid include Dana Gillespie and Lindsay Kemp – the gender of the subject is ambiguous.)
➢ Toronto’s local newspaper BayToday reports on
how the bargain was discovered. . .
Jeff Turl writes – “ It’s every bargain hunter’s dream… paying next to nothing but scoring big time. The buyer picked up the treasure, left in a pile of discarded goods in a thrift store, for just $5. The painting is valued at $12,000 (£7,200 GBP), its upper estimate, at Cowley Abbott’s International Art Online Auction from June 15-24.
The painting is titled, D Head XLVI and is a small 24.8 x 20.3 cm acrylic and computer collage on canvas, dated 1997. “The consignor of the painting was astonished upon viewing a label which read David Bowie and realized it was the signature of the artist inscribed on the reverse,” says Andrea McLoughlin, Cowley Abbott spokeswoman. The painting’s female owner has not been identified.
Bowie’s DHead XLVI as Lot 27 in the Cowley Abbott sale – its top estimate well exceeded within four days
“Many people may not know that Bowie enjoyed painting, and between 1994 and 1997 he created a series of approximately 45 works on canvas which he titled Dead Heads (or D Heads), each with a different non-sequential Roman numeral,” explains McLoughlin. “The sitters ranged from band members, friends and acquaintances and there were also some self-portraits. It has been suggested that, for some of these important paintings, Bowie drew inspiration from the Ziggy Stardust era. With long hair and a pronounced profile, this energetic and enigmatic portrait is truly a rare representation from a celebrated artist.”
Paintings by the late music icon are rarely seen at auction, with the most recent sale of artwork from the D Head series fetching $32,000 USD ($38,861CDN) at an auction in the United Kingdom in 2016… ” / Continued at Baytoday.ca
➢ Cowley Abbott’s International Art Online Auction
ran from June 15–24 when bidding for Lot 27, Bowie’s DHead XLVI, closed at 02:15 PM EDT. The painting achieved an astonishing $108,120 CDN (£63,269 GBP). This echoes Sotheby’s 2016 sale of Bowie’s own modern art collection, when most established artists’ prices were inflated by a substantial “Bowie premium”.
➢➢ Shapers of the 80s ➣➣ 