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Gavin Evans, Bowie (c) Gavin Evans

David Bowie’s personal art collection, unveiled in public for the first time, will come up at Sotheby’s in London in November.  “Bowie/Collector” is to be a three-part sale of around 400 items. At its heart will be Bowie’s collection of Modern and Contemporary British art – a richly stimulating group of over 200 works by many of the most important British artists of the 20th-century, including Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland, Frank Auerbach and Damien Hirst. Bowie’s famously inquisitive mind also led him to Outsider Art, Surrealism, Contemporary African art and, not least, to the work of the eccentric Italian designer Ettore Sottsass and the Memphis group. This is a collection put together with great thoughtfulness on the basis not of reputation but of Bowie’s highly personal, intellectual response to the individual vision and individual works of particular artists.

Before being exhibited at Sotheby’s, New Bond St. from November 1-10 there will be a series of previews around the world, starting with a three-week exhibition of selected works in London this summer, running from July 20 to August 9. Further exhibitions will follow in Los Angeles, New York and Hong Kong.

“Art was, seriously, the only thing I’d ever wanted to own. It has always been for me a stable nourishment. I use it. It can change the way I feel in the mornings. The same work can change me in different ways, depending on what I’m going through.”

– David Bowie, quoted in The New York Times, 1998 –

Ettore Sottsass, Casablanca Sideboard (1981)

Peter Lanyon – Witness

David Bowie – Beautiful, shattering, slashing (1995)

Basquiat – Air Power (1984)

Auerbach – Head of Gerda Boehm (1965)