David Bowie David Robert Jones (8 January 194710 January 2016), known professionally as David Bowie ( ), was an English singer-songwriter and actor. A leading figure in the music industry, he is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the ...

owned an extensive private art collection which included paintings, sculpture and furniture. He started collecting art in the mid-1970s and continued through the end of his life. His collection included paintings that he himself painted.

Bowie as an art collector and supporter of art

Bowie reportedly began appreciating and collecting art in the mid 1970s, when he moved to Berlin to escape his cocaine addiction. Artist and writer

Matthew Collings Matthew Collings (born 1955) is a British art critic, writer, broadcaster, and artist. He is married to Emma Biggs, with whom he collaborates on art works. Education Born in London in 1955, Collings studied at Byam Shaw School of Art, and Golds ...

characterized the collection as "bohemian, romantic, expressive, emotional art". Bowie was described by an art advisor as "a true collector. His acquisitions were not commercially motivated; he cared about the art, not the market. His was a deeply personal, eclectic collection, reflecting his British roots and his real passion for art." He was frequently featured in

ARTnews ''ARTnews'' is an American visual-arts magazine, based in New York City. It covers art from ancient to contemporary times. ARTnews is the oldest and most widely distributed art magazine in the world. It has a readership of 180,000 in 124 countr ...

' "Top 200 collectors" lists. Bowie's collection of contemporary African Art, was described as " emonstratingan appreciation that goes far beyond the all-too-frequent exoticism and 'othering' of art from the continent." In 1995, Bowie pushed for an exhibition of South African art, and he wrote about the 1995 Johannesburg Biennale for the magazine ''

Modern Painters ''Modern Painters'' (1843–1860) is a five-volume work by the Victorian art critic, John Ruskin, begun when he was 24 years old based on material collected in Switzerland in 1842. Ruskin argues that recent painters emerging from the tradition of ...

''. By 1998, Bowie was a board member of ''Modern Painters'', and he participated in the Nat Tate art hoax.

Notable artists and works in the collection

Notable artists included in Bowie's collection included: *

Outsider art Outsider art is art made by self-taught or supposedly naïve artists with typically little or no contact with the conventions of the art worlds. In many cases, their work is discovered only after their deaths. Often, outsider art illustrate ...

from the Gugging Group *

Frank Auerbach Frank Helmut Auerbach (born 29 April 1931) is a German-British painter. Born in Germany, he has been a naturalised British subject since 1947. He is considered one of the leading names in the School of London, with fellow artists Francis Bacon ...

- 1965 ''Head of Gerda Boehm'' (l.) * Jean-Michel Basquiat - 1984 ''Air Power'' - Year unknown "A Bruit Secret" *

David Bomberg David Garshen Bomberg (5 December 1890 – 19 August 1957) was a British painter, and one of the Whitechapel Boys. Bomberg was one of the most audacious of the exceptional generation of artists who studied at the Slade School of Art under Henr ...

* Achille Castiglioni and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni - 1960s

Brionvega Brionvega is an Italian electronics company that is known for manufacturing futuristic televisions and audio equipment. The company was founded in 1939 by Giuseppe Brion and Leone Pajettain in Milan. Initially named B.P.M. Radio, the company w ...

RR 126 radiogram *

Patrick Caulfield Patrick Joseph Caulfield, (29 January 1936 – 29 September 2005), was an English painter and printmaker known for his bold canvases, which often incorporated elements of photorealism within a pared-down scene. Examples of his work are ''Po ...

Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...

Harold Gilman Harold John Wilde Gilman (11 February 187612 February 1919) was a British painter of interiors, portraits and landscapes, and a founder-member of the Camden Town Group. Early life and studies Harold John Wilde Gilman was the second son and ...

- ''A London Interior'' * Romuald Hazoumè *

Erich Heckel Erich Heckel (31 July 1883 – 27 January 1970) was a German painter and printmaker, and a founding member of the group ''Die Brücke'' ("The Bridge") which existed 1905–1913. His work was part of the art competitions at the 1928 Summer ...

Damien Hirst Damien Steven Hirst (; né Brennan; born 7 June 1965) is an English artist, entrepreneur, and art collector. He is one of the Young British Artists (YBAs) who dominated the art scene in the UK during the 1990s. He is reportedly the United Kingd ...

Ivon Hitchens Ivon Hitchens (born London, 3 March 1893 – 29 August 1979) was an English painter who started exhibiting during the 1920s. He became part of the 'London Group' of artists and exhibited with them during the 1930s. His house was bombed in 1940 du ...

Peter Howson Peter Howson OBE (born 27 March 1958) is a Scottish painter. He was a British official war artist in 1993 during the Bosnian War. Early life Peter Howson was born in London of Scottish parents and moved with his family to Prestwick, A ...

* Leon Kossoff *

Peter Lanyon George Peter Lanyon (8 February 1918 – 31 August 1964) was a British painter of landscapes leaning heavily towards abstraction. Lanyon was one of the most important artists to emerge in post-war Britain. Despite his early death at the ag ...

Wyndham Lewis Percy Wyndham Lewis (18 November 1882 – 7 March 1957) was a British writer, painter and critic. He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art and edited ''BLAST,'' the literary magazine of the Vorticists. His novels include ''Tarr'' ( ...

* Memphis Milano * Henry Moore *

Odd Nerdrum Odd Nerdrum (born 8 April 1944) is a Norwegian figurative painter, born in Sweden, and considered to be one of the greatest living classical figurative painters. His work is held by museums worldwide. Themes and style in Nerdrum's work referenc ...

Winifred Nicholson ''From Bedroom Window, Bankshead'', date unknown, private collection. Typical of Nicholson's impressionist work, combining still life with landscape. Rosa Winifred Nicholson (née Roberts; 21 December 1893 – 5 March 1981) was a British p ...

* Méret Oppenheim *

Francis Picabia Francis Picabia (: born Francis-Marie Martinez de Picabia; 22January 1879 – 30November 1953) was a French avant-garde painter, poet and typographist. After experimenting with Impressionism and Pointillism, Picabia became associated with Cubism ...

Peter Paul Rubens Sir Peter Paul Rubens (; ; 28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640) was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands (modern-day Belgium). He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque tradi ...

* Egon Schiele * William Scott *

Ettore Sottsass Ettore Sottsass (Innsbruck, Austria 14 September 1917 – Milan, Italy 31 December 2007) was a 20th century Italian architect, noted for also designing furniture, jewellery, glass, lighting, home and office wares, as well as numerous buildings an ...

* Stanley Spencer *

Graham Sutherland Graham Vivian Sutherland (24 August 1903 – 17 February 1980) was a prolific English artist. Notable for his paintings of abstract landscapes and for his portraits of public figures, Sutherland also worked in other media, including printmaking ...

Tintoretto Tintoretto ( , , ; born Jacopo Robusti; late September or early October 1518Bernari and de Vecchi 1970, p. 83.31 May 1594) was an Italian painter identified with the Venetian school. His contemporaries both admired and criticized the speed wit ...

- Altarpiece of Saint Catherine * William Turnbull *

Euan Uglow Euan Ernest Richard Uglow (10 March 1932 – 31 August 2000) was a British painter. He is best known for his nude and still life paintings, such as ''German Girl'' and ''Skull''. Biography Euan Uglow was born in 1932 in London. As a child, he l ...

* John Virtue *

Jack Butler Yeats Jack Butler Yeats RHA (29 August 1871 – 28 March 1957) was an Irish artist and Olympic medalist. W. B. Yeats was his brother. Butler's early style was that of an illustrator; he only began to work regularly in oils in 1906. His early pic ...

Basquiat's ''Air Power'', estimated at US $3.5 million to be the most expensive single piece of art in Bowie's collection, sold for $8.8 million in 2016. Tintoretto's altarpiece, which was one of Bowie's earliest art acquisitions back in 1987, was sold for £191,000. Bowie himself was a painter and sculptor, and works by his own hand are part of his collection. This includes a series of self-portraits he painted in 1995, one of which he used as the cover to his album '' Outside''. Bowie would also attend gallery openings, often with his wife Iman, such as in 1999 when visiting an opening with artist Damian Loeb.

2016 auction

Around 350 pieces of art from Bowie's collection were put up for auction in November 2016. None of Bowie's own art was part of the auction, and the proceeds from the sale went to Bowie's family. An estimate by

Sotheby's Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...

auction house estimated the value of the collection for sale at around US $13 million. Prior to the auction, some of the pieces were shown in Los Angeles, New York and Hong Kong. The pieces up for auction represented about two-thirds of Bowie's entire art collection. Bowie's family sold the collection because they "didn't have the space" to store it. The auction exceeded expectations, and the entire collection was sold over two days for £32.9 million (app. $41.5 million), while the highest-selling item was Jean-Michel Basquiat’s graffiti-inspired painting ''Air Power'', sold for £7.09 million. Exhibitions of the works in London alone attracted over 51,000 visitors, the highest attendance for any pre-sale exhibition in London. The auctions themselves were attended by 1,750 bidders, with over 1,000 more bidding online.

2021 auction

In the mid- to late-1990s, Bowie painted a series of paintings entitled "DHead", typically followed by a roman numeral. These paintings were often of friends, bandmates, and self-portraits. One such DHead was used as the album cover for his 1995 album '' 1. Outside''. In June 2021, "DHead XLVI" was put up for auction by a Canadian company, and fetched a price of CA $108,120 (or roughly USD $87,800).

Bowie as an art collector and supporter of art

Notable artists and works in the collection

2016 auction

2021 auction

See also

References