David Bowie owned an extensive private art collection included paintings, sculpture and furniture. Artist and writer Matthew Collings 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."
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Notable artists and works in the collection
Notable artists included in Bowie's collection included:
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.
Bowie himself was painter and sculptor, and works by his own hand are part of his collection.
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 will be part of the auction, and the proceeds from the sale will go to Bowie's family. An estimate by Sotheby's 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 on line.