An overview of Banksy Originals sold at auction since 1 January 2023 by chronological order. For more information about each work, please refer to the catalogue section.
Congestion Charge, 2004
Bonhams London: 29 June 2023
Estimated: GBP 1,200,000 – 1,800,000
GBP 1,681,900
Bonhams : BANKSY (B. 1974) Congestion Charge 2004
68.5 x 78.7 cm (26 15/16 x 31 inches)
Heavy Weaponry (On Multi-Colored Background), 2009
Christie’s London: 29 June 2023
Estimated: GBP 200,000 – 300,000
GBP 195,300
BANKSY
Heavy Weaponry (On Multi-Colored Background), 2009
Spraypaint and acrylic on board, in artist’s frame
59.4 x 70 x 5.5 cm (23 3/8 x 27 1/2 x 2 1/8 inches)
This work is from a varied series
Signed ‘BANKSY’ (lower right); signed and dated ‘BANKSY 09’ (on the reverse)
Presented in an artist’s frame, Heavy Weaponry (On Multi-Coloured Background) is a striking example of Banksy’s satirical and socially-charged compositions. Executed in 2009, it is closely related to another version that featured in his landmark exhibition Banksy vs the Bristol Museum that same year. Rendered in his instantly-recognisable hand-cut stencil technique, the work depicts an elephant charging across the picture plane with a missile strapped to its back. Behind the animal, brightly-coloured stripes recall a television error screen. Capturing the anti-war sentiment that has fuelled some of Banksy’s best-known images, the motif of the armed elephant has recurred throughout his practice. First depicted in spray paint on fibreboard in 1998—against a colourful barcode labelled ‘Heavy Weaponry’—it was reimagined on canvas in 2000, spray-painted onto weathered iron in 2001, and depicted over another work, titled Radar Rat, on cardboard in 2002. Replete with biting humour and dark irony, the present work offers a refinement of Banksy’s original spray-painted motif, returning for the first time to the colourful background introduced a decade earlier.
Dorothy I Don’t Think…, 2011
Christie’s London: 28 June 2023
Estimated: GBP 600,000 – 800,000
GBP 1,008,000
Dorothy I Don’t Think…, 2011
Spray paint on lino flooring laid on board
100×80 cm (39 3/8 x 31 1/2 inches)
Signed ‘BANKSY’ (lower right); signed and dated ‘BANKSY 11’ (on the reverse)
Held in the same private collection since it was acquired directly from the artist in 2011, Dorothy I Don’t Think … crackles with Banksy’s deadpan conceptual wit. Rare for its inclusion of the artist’s signature on both the front and reverse, the work depicts Dorothy—played by Judy Garland—and her dog Toto from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. Below runs the phrase ‘I don’t think we’re on canvas anymore’: a pun on Dorothy’s iconic line ‘I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore’. Canvas, indeed, has vanished: instead the image is spray-painted on a slab of lino floor, underscored by a series of red dots. An earlier version of the work was included in Banksy’s infamous exhibition Banksy versus Bristol Museum (2009), in which he replaced the contents of the museum’s collection with his own works. In this iteration, which became the poster image for the show, the picture appeared on a sheet of paper suspended freely from the center of an empty frame.
Banksquiat. Boy and Dog in Stop and Search, 2018
Phillips New-York: 17 May 2023
Estimated: USD 8,000,000 – 12,000,000
USD 9,724,500
Banksy – 20th Century & Contemporary Art… Lot 13 May 2023 | Phillips
Banksquiat. Boy and Dog in Stop and Search, 2018
Acrylic and wax marker on birch wood, in 3 parts
243.8 x 344.5 cm (96 x 135 5/8 inches)
Signed “Banksy” lower right
In the early hours of September 17, 2017, Banksy paid a clandestine visit to the Barbican in Central London. That morning, as The Londonist shares, Banksy’s newest image caught museum staff by surprise: “a brilliant homage” to Jean-Michel Basquiat, stenciled on the wall in Golden Lane. As The New York Times reported: “Banksy Strikes Again.”Banksy timed the creation of his intervention to the opening of Basquiat: Boom for Real at the Barbican, the first comprehensive exhibition of the influential street artist in the United Kingdom since his untimely death in 1988. The present work, Banksquiat. Boy and Dog in Stop and Search, executed on panel in 2018, features two figures from Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1982 painting, Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump, being frisked by members of London’s Metropolitan Police. Basquiat’s boy and dog are rendered in the late artist’s gestural painterly style, while the police officers are executed using Banksy’s signature black-and-white stencil technique. A collaboration beyond space and time, the work unites two street art giants from either side of the Atlantic in a cogent commentary on commodification and privilege in contemporary art.
Exclamation Rat, 2003
Sotheby’s London: 18 April 2023
Estimated: GBP 220,000 – 320,000
GBP 279,400
Exclamation Rat | Contemporary Curated | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
Exclamation Rat, 2003
Spray paint on canvas
40 x 30.5 cm (15 3/4 x 12 inches)
Tagged on the overturn edge
A mischievous example of Banksy’s satirical and highly sought after animal stencils, Exclamation Rat is an iconic image that encapsulates the artist’s rebellious visual language. Hunted down by authorities, considered nuisances by society, and looked down upon by the establishment, Banksy and street art form an inextricably linked comradery with the rat; the dregs of society. By giving the figure of the rat visibility on the world stage, Banksy speaks for those oppressed and defeated by the endless competition and consumerism that exists in our capitalistic society.
Home Sweet Home, 2006
Phillips London: 3 March 2023
Estimated: GBP 1,500,000 – 2,500,000
GBP 1,742,000
Banksy – 20th Century & Contemporary A… Lot 21 March 2023 | Phillips
Home Sweet Home, 2006
Modified oil on canvas, in artist’s frame
80×110 cm (31 1/2 x 43 1/4 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Bansky 06’ on the reverse
No stranger to staging interventions in public space and sparking debates about its uses and abuses, in 2009 Banksy took this practice indoors for the landmark exhibition Banksy vs The Bristol Museum. Taking over the historical building and its collection, Banksy transformed the space into ‘a menagerie of Unnatural History’, disrupting the curatorial logic of the museum as a way of provoking a conversation around who decides which objects belong in museums and why. Alongside larger installations and sculptural pieces ‘adjusted’ in characteristic Banksy fashion, the exhibition took advantage of its location to place objects from the collection into direct dialogue with examples of Banksy’s Vandalised Oils series, radically extending the underlying premise of this body of work as a witty challenge to the art historical canon and the broader cultural assumptions that it maintains. Loaned by the current owner to the Moca Museum in Barcelona, Home Sweet Home has also been included in some of Banksy’s most notorious exhibitions including his Los Angeles debut, Barely Legal and Banksy vs the Bristol Museum.
Flower Chucker, 2003
Sotheby’s London: 2 March 2023
Estimated: GBP 300,000 – 400,000
GBP 381,000
Flower Chucker | Modern & Contemporary Day Auction | | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
Flower Chucker, 2003
Spray paint on cardboard
54.5 x 56 cm (21 1/2 x 22 inches)
Stenciled with the artist’s name
An iconic symbol of anarchy, Banksy’s Flower Chucker adopts the archetypal pose of civil disobedience, preparing to throw a bomb or a Molotov cocktail in the air towards an unseen enemy. Yet, the weapon is replaced with a bouquet of flowers, disarming the image of its connotations of violent unrest and expressing a potent call for peace. In the tradition of other historically iconic images that preceded it, such as Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and Andy Warhol’s Marilyn, the image of the flower thrower has been imitated and replicated countless times in a testament to its visual strength and power.
