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Even though the title of this article alludes to a financial analysis of Banksy’s auction market, it is mostly a fun way to get introduced to some of the most iconic artworks the artist has created, and to enter into his artistic world. Each of these works are also referred to within our catalogue for Banksy Originals.

Banksy has had an established secondary market for more than 15 years, with many works of all types (originals, editions, and prints) hitting the auction block with regularity. All the major auction houses have been including Banksy’s works in their auctions for many years at this stage of the game. Banksy has been setting and subsequently breaking many auction records since 2020, and it might only be a sign of more to come given that he established a new record for himself in 2021 – crossing the USD 20 million threshold for the first time with his artwork dedicated to health-care workers during COVID, Game Changer.

56 originals by Banksy sold at public auction over USD 1 million so far…

Naturally, most of these have occurred in the recent years, including 22 times in 2021 and 9 times in 2020. Said differently, XX of the XX times that one of Banksy’s artworks sold at public auction for more than $1 million have taken place over the past XX years…

READ ABOUT LOVE IS IN THE BIN

Undermining the establishment has always been at the heart of Banksy’s work, indeed, taking the artworld down a peg or two has particular currency in his imagery and ideology. It should therefore have come as no surprise that Banksy would mastermind perhaps the most extraordinary and elaborate feat of artistic subterfuge in recent history: the moment Girl with Balloon ‘self-destructed’ at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction on 5 October 2018. But of course, this wasn’t an act of destruction, it was a moment of creation, a metamorphosis that transformed Banksy’s Girl with Balloon into an entirely new work of art…

READ ABOUT GAME CHANGER

On 6 May 2020, during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, a painting entitled Game Changer appeared at University Hospital Southampton. In crisp, linear detail, it showed a young boy playing with a selection of superhero dolls. This is a fine example of Banksy using his talent and platform to advance a philanthropic effort. He gifted the canvas to Southampton General Hospital, and the proceeds from the sale were used to support the wellbeing of the University Hospital’s staff and patients.

READ ABOUT SUNFLOWERS FROM PETROL STATION

Held for its entire life in the collection of legendary British fashion designer Sir Paul Smith, Sunflowers from Petrol Station is an icon within Banksy’s oeuvre. Witty, irreverent and subversive, it offers a wry reimagining of Vincent van Gogh’s celebrated Sunflowers, transforming the Dutch master’s radiant yellow blooms into a cluster of dried, wilted stems. It is an outstanding demonstration of Banksy’s virtuosity as a painter, and his acerbic flair as a satirist. Through the comedic pathos of withered petrol station flowers—a modern-day memento mori—the artist implicates the pollution of both art and nature at the hands of consumerism: neither, he warns, will last forever in its clutches. Against a backdrop of thickly-wrought impasto, dead petals accumulate around the base of the vase, which bears the artist’s name—in place of Van Gogh’s—in blue lettering.

READ ABOUT LOVE IS IN THE AIR

Love is in the Air is a quintessential Banksy painting. Instantly recognizable, the image has become synonymous with the artist’s indelible graphic style, wry humor and galvanizing political commentary. Banksy’s subject adopts the archetypal pose of civic unrest, preparing to hurl a brick or bomb towards an unseen foe. One of the artist’s most cherished works on canvas, further distinguished by the inclusion of hand painted flowers in oil, Love is in the Air is a work that reminds us of the injustice and inequality that exists around us, and offers a simple message of hope.  It is indisputable that this bold and declarative work helped to establish Banksy’s place in art history, cementing his reputation as a pivotal and universally heard artistic voice.

READ ABOUT DEVOLVED PARLIAMENT

Banksy’s largest known canvas (measuring more than 4 meters wide), Devolved Parliament, features chimpanzees sitting in place of the politicians in the House of Commons. Despite being painted in 2009, many commentators have drawn comparisons to current-day politics, and the chaos witnessed in the House of Commons over Brexit. Devolved Parliament was first unveiled as part of the Banksy vs Bristol Museum exhibit in 2009 and was loaned back to the Bristol Museum in March 2019, marking both the exhibit’s 10th anniversary and Britain’s original planned exit from the EU on 29 March 2019.

USD 10 million

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#6. Show Me Monet, 2004

Sotheby’s London: 21 October 2020
Estimated: GBP 3,000,000 – 5,000,000
GBP 7,551,600 / USD 9,888,615

BANKSY | SHOW ME THE MONET | Contemporary Art Evening Auction | | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

BANKSY
Show Me The Monet, 2005
Oil on canvas, in artist’s frame
Framed: 143.1 x 143.4 cm (56.4 x 56.5 inches
Signed

Show me the Monet is one of the most iconic paintings of Banksy’s illustrious career. It is an extremely rare, entirely hand-painted canvas that helped establish Banksy’s position as the controversial and decisive social commentator that we all know and love. It was one of the masterpieces exhibited at Banksy’s landmark 2005 exhibition Crude Oils: A Gallery of Re-mixed Masterpieces, Vandalism and Vermin. 

READ ABOUT BANKSQUIAT. BOY AND DOG IN STOP AND SEARCH

While Banksquiat. Boy and Dog in Stop and Search finds its visual basis in Basquiat’s Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump, Banksy reinterprets Basquiat’s imagery—and rewrites his title—to shift the meaning of the work. Basquiat’s Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump is a blistering summer scene, with the boy and dog posing in the red-hot water of a johnnypump, slang for an opened fire hydrant that turns the street into an impromptu (and technically illegal) water park. Spike Lee famously captures the raucous joy of this summertime activity in his 1989 film, Do the Right Thing, which focuses on residents of Bedford Stuyvesant, a historically Black neighborhood in Basquiat’s native Brooklyn. Basquiat paints his figures against a vibrant background of red, green, and yellow, colors which commonly feature on Caribbean and African textiles, like rastacaps, kente cloth, and the traditional Ethiopian flag. These colors, in place of the white spray of rushing water, underscore the localized connection of the visuals of Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump to the lived experience and material existence of Black Brooklynites.

READ ABOUT FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSING

Towering at seven meters in height, Banksy’s monumental Forgive Us Our Trespassing (created in 2011) is the largest known work by the anonymous street artist. The piece is a powerfully resplendent vision – unabashedly brazen while still deeply poignant. While the widely recognizable image of the kneeling boy, accompanied by the title Forgive Us Our Trespassing, first appeared in 2010, the present 7-meter work was created in 2011. Making the piece even more interesting is the fact that more than one hundred 6th-9th grade students at the City of Angels School in Los Angeles contributed to the work. The project was aimed to encourage children to create art – showing us yet again that Banksy’s heart is always in the right place. The students assisted in tagging the stained-glass windows, Forgive Us Our Trespassing goes to the very heart of the spirit of street art and graffiti. The imagery itself, on the other hand, is a potent and moving revelation of Banksy’s conflicted feelings about being a graffiti artist, speaking to deep preoccupations and pathos that underscore his artistic production.

READ ABOUT LOVE IS IN THE AIR

One of Banksy’s most iconic and immediately recognizable images, Love is in the Air encapsulates the decisive social commentator and wry humor that typify the artist’s provocative and highly acclaimed oeuvre. In its original guerrilla iteration in Beit Sahour near the West Bank Barrier, Love is in the Air testifies to Banksy’s unique ability to activate urban environments and public architecture in a way that supercharges his message, lending his images a searing immediacy which extends far beyond all those who live in or visit the region, juxtaposing the active gesture of protest with the reconciliatory symbol of a Flower Bouquet.

READ ABOUT TROLLEYS

Holding various weapons, the three men pictured are poised to attack. The targets of their attack are, in typical Banksy fashion, trolleys – or shopping carts. The poignancy of the resulting work is twofold; firstly in its timeless critique of capitalism, and secondly in its unique and unexpected resonance today. The trolley, comic in its incongruity, nods to our consumer society’s predilection for, and reliance on, highly processed, branded packaged food products, and our inability to fend for ourselves. 

Created in 2006, Sale Ends Today plays out Banksy’s irreverent humor on an epic scale. Across a vast white canvas more than four meters wide, he uses his trademark stencil technique to depict four kneeling women, who variously pray, collapse or throw up their hands in attitudes of lament.

READ ABOUT VANDALISED OIL (CHOPPERS)

Weaponized helicopters thud into view above a peaceful Claude Lorrain-esque pastoral scene; a traditional oil painting is vandalized with passages of black and khaki spray paint; Vandalized Oil (Choppers) is a brutal and immediate painting that typifies the impact and aggression that characterizes the best of Banksy’s work. Coming from the collection of British pop icon Robbie Williams, the present work is one of the very best examples of the Vandalized Oils series, and one of only a handful to have been reproduced in Banksy’s only official monograph, Wall and Piece. In its appreciation we are reminded not only of how effective and how funny the concetto at the heart of the Vandalized Oils is, but also of Banksy’s tireless focus on various social issues, most pertinently his anti-war message.

READ ABOUT CRUDE OIL (VETTRIANO)

Crude Oil (Vettriano) stands as one of the most instantly recognizable and audacious works in Banksy’s provocative oeuvre – a rare, entirely hand-painted canvas that epitomises the artist’s role as a cultural agitator and sharp-witted social commentator. Rooted in the anti-establishment ethos of punk, Banksy’s output has always been a performative act of defiance; a rejection of the rigid structures of the art world and the institutions that dictate taste, cultural and commercial value. From his early days tagging the streets of Bristol to the guerrilla-style interventions that catapulted him into the international spotlight, his practice has remained a direct challenge to authority, hierarchy, and convention.

READ ABOUT THE LEOPARD AND LAMB

The Leopard and Lamb by Banksy is a captivating portrayal that seamlessly integrates the biblical symbolism with the artist’s contemporary socio-political commentary. Exhibited at Banksy’s renowned Walled-Off Hotel in Bethlehem, situated close to the separation wall, and captures a moment of harmony. The work depicts a leopard lying peacefully beside a lamb, invoking the prophetic imagery from Isaiah 11:6: “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat.” This visual metaphor not only enriches the biblical reference of natural enemies in serene coexistence but also subtly critiques war and conflict, urging a reflection on the universal hope of peace.

READ ABOUT GIRL WITH BALLOON (DIPTYCH)

Girl and Balloon, first realized in 2003, is without a doubt one of the most iconic images of the 21st century. Instantly recognizable, its enduring success lies within the ease with which it has been disseminated and reproduced online by a new, tech-savvy generation of art lovers. Despite this, its earliest renditions on the streets of London have been lost, and the present series of canvases from 2003 and the subsequent prints released the following year are the only concrete testimony to the work’s appeal.

READ ABOUT LOVE IS IN THE AIR

One of Banksy’s most iconic and immediately recognizable images, Love is in the Air encapsulates the decisive social commentator and wry humor that typify the artist’s provocative and highly acclaimed oeuvre. In its original guerrilla iteration in Beit Sahour near the West Bank Barrier, Love is in the Air testifies to Banksy’s unique ability to activate urban environments and public architecture in a way that supercharges his message, lending his images a searing immediacy which extends far beyond all those who live in or visit the region, juxtaposing the active gesture of protest with the reconciliatory symbol of a Flower Bouquet.

READ ABOUT GIRL WITH BALLOON

Banksy’s Girl with Balloon is one of the most iconic artistic motifs in the world. In the present work, coming from the Robbie Williams collection, it reaches its apotheosis. Executed in grand scale, and on a roughly hewn medium that recalls the street-art roots of its creator, this work is one of the most rare and impressive extant iterations of this paradigm-shifting stencil.

READ ABOUT DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH

One of the most enigmatic figures in contemporary art, Banksy is a highly vocal critic of society, bad actors of capitalism, and the place of graffiti within a greater art historical conversation. Diamond in the Rough speaks to the artist’s beginnings in the urban environment and is a deft combination of readymade surfaces and Banksy’s instantly recognizable style. The composition’s ingenuity lies both in the artist’s seemingly simple choice of subject matter and its ability to start a conversation about the art form at large. Leveraging the perceived rebelliousness attached to street artists in order to bring more attention to their work and his own cultural statements, examples such as the present work are testaments to the place of street art in the canon and the inability to fully extract it from its perceived history. Working to incorporate the city itself into his work, Banksy activates walls, doors, and various found objects with his stencils, sprays, and brush in an effort to pay homage to the living organism that is the metropolitan sector. Never content to work within the confines of a prescribed space, the artist’s myriad ventures spread across the globe in a variety of provocative forms.

Executed on a large scale and featuring a young child kneeling in prayer before a monumental Gothic stained-glass window with his head bowed towards his hands, the composition draws on the familiar iconography of devotional images, only to undercut this set of visual cues with the addition of contemporary urban clothing and the tools of the graffiti artist’s trade by the child’s side. His hoodie pulled up over a baseball cap, the child’s ‘trespassing’ here points to the fundamental action of graffiti and street art as a breaking of boundaries – both the physical boundaries of private property that is tagged in the process, and the questioning of societal rules that it often provokes.

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USD 3 million

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#26. MEDITERRANEAN SEA VIEW, 2017

Sotheby’s London: 28 July 2020
Estimated: GBP 800,000 – 1,200,000
GBP 2,235,000 / USD 2,893,580

BANKSY | MEDITERRANEAN SEA VIEW 2017 | Rembrandt to Richter | 2020 | Sotheby’s

BANKSY (b. 1975)
MEDITERRANEAN SEA VIEW, 2017
Reworked oil paintings in artist’s frames, in three parts
(i) 83 x 68 cm (32 3/4 x 26 3/4 inches)
(ii) 115 x 84.5 cm (45 1/4 x 33 1/4 inches)
(iii) 69.8 x 59.5 cm (27 1/2 x 59 1/2 inches)
Signed on the third canvas

Comprising three found oil paintings, each traditionally framed and depicting tumultuous seascapes reminiscent of Romantic era paintings and present-day imitations, Mediterranean Sea View juxtaposes a historic fine art genre with grim contemporaneity. Banksy reworked the original compositions by adding a slew of hand-painted life jackets and buoys – a visual amendment that evokes mass death at sea. Indeed, as inferred by the work’s title, Mediterranean Sea View alludes to the lives lost at sea during the European migrant ‘crisis’ of the 2010s.

READ ABOUT MEDITERRANEAN SEA VIEW

All proceeds went towards building a new acute stroke unit and purchasing children’s rehabilitation equipment for BASR Hospital in Bethlehem. Mediterranean Sea View was installed in the lobby of the Walled Off Hotel in the Palestinian town of Bethlehem.  Mediterranean Sea View was created for display over the rubble-filled fireplace in the colonial-styled hotel lobby. Adorning the walls amongst button-back armchairs, velvet curtains, and dark-wood paneling, this work reads as the perfect adornment for a nineteenth-century bourgeois interior.

READ ABOUT THIS IS NOT A PHOTO OPPORTUNITY

Distilling his signature criticality of society’s predilections into a lush pastoral scene and stenciled deadpan phrase, This is not a photo opportunity demonstrates the enduring prescience of Banksy’s practice. Part of his Vandalized Oils series, the present work juxtaposes contemporary graffiti and stenciling with the archetypal painted landscape. Disrupting art historical convention, the piece also sees a Duchampian appropriation, with a found painting serving as the basis for Banksy’s mocking chide. Created several years before the formation of social media platforms such as Instagram, This is not a photo opportunity has increased resonance today, as the taking and sharing of photos has become a pivotal part of the formation of contemporary identity.

#29. Sorry The Lifestyle You Ordered Is Currently Out Of Stock

Sotheby’s New-York, 28 October 2020
Estimated: USD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
USD 2,319,000

BANKSY (DEFACED HIRST) | SORRY THE LIFESTYLE YOU ORDERED IS CURRENTLY OUT OF STOCK | Contemporary Art Evening Auction | 2020 | Sotheby’s

BANKSY
Sorry The Lifestyle You Ordered Is Currently Out of Stock (Defaced Hirst), 2013-2014

Spray paint, emulsion and household gloss on canvas

99.1×114.3 cm (39×45 inches)

Sorry The Lifestyle you Ordered is Currently Out of Stock is a Damien Hirst Pharmaceutical (spot) painting which Banksy has defaced. It is the second time a Defaced Hirst appeared at auction, Keep It Spotless, featuring an iconic Banksy‘s stencil of a maid sold at auction in 2008 already for a record price.

READ ABOUT SORRY THE LIFESTYLE YOU ORDERED

 

This time Banksy takes another angle using an expression he has been widely sharing all along his career, attaching it to a “lifestyle”, which is not only a criticism against consumerism, but also against the way art collectors might be purchasing artworks, not for their artistic qualities, but rather for what they mean in terms of lifestyle.

 

#30. Laugh Now But One Day We’ll Be in Charge, 2000

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 18 June 2021
Estimated: HKD 6,200,000 – 9,300,000
HKD 18,920,000 / USD 2,282,681

Banksy 班克斯 | Laugh Now But One Day We’ll Be in Charge 現在儘管笑吧，終有一天我們將為主宰者 | Contemporary Curated: Asia | JAY CHOU x SOTHEBY’S | Evening Sale | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

BANKSY
Laugh Now But One Day We’ll Be in Charge, 2000
Acrylic and spray paint on canvas
61×61 cm (24×24 inches)

READ ABOUT LAUGH BUT ONE DAY

Throughout his career Banksy’s art has been frequently dismissed as crass or glib; yet in spite of this, his work can be seen to fit into a rich and venerable history of political parody. From the British pictorial satirists of the Eighteenth Century, including Thomas Rowlandson, James Gillray and, of course, the great William Hogarth, through to the allegorical writings of George Orwell whose revolutionary novel Animal Farm similarly utilized zoological symbolism to critique modern society, and on to the political cartoonists of the present day, Banksy’s finest work is situated within an esteemed tradition of raising an unforgiving and illuminating mirror up to the world.

#34. Laugh Now But One Day We’ll Be In Charge

Christie’s New-York: 11 May 2021
USD 2,070,000

BANKSY
Laugh Now But One Day We’ll Be In Charge, 2002

Spray-paint and emulsion on paperboard

76×102 cm (30 x 41 1/8 inches)

READ ABOUT SORRY THE LIFESTYLE YOU ORDERED IS CURRENTLY OUT OF STOCK

Audacious and provocative, in Sorry The Lifestyle You Ordered Is Currently Out Of Stock guerrilla street artist Banksy collapses high culture and street art, applying the pointed satire of his site-specific graffiti to a direct critique of the connections between the art market, consumer capitalism, and environmental issues. Set within a heavy gilt frame evoking museum walls and Old Master paintings, the work is composed of an appropriated canvas featuring a romantic mountain landscape, defaced with the slogan ‘Sorry The lifestyle you ordered is currently out of stock’ and attached to a densely spraypainted board behind. Uniting these different elements within the work Banksy forges unexpected dialogues between them, communicating his message with characteristic economy and wit.

#38. Monkey Poison

Phillips New-York: 2 July 2020
Estimated: USD 1,800,000 – 2,500,000
USD 2,000,000

Banksy – 20th Century and Contemporary … Lot 12 July 2020 | Phillips

BANKSY
Monkey Poison, 2004

Oil and spray enamel on found canvas in artist’s frame

61x91cm (24 x 35 5/8 inches)

Stenciled in spray paint atop an Old Master’s reproduction encased in a gilded frame, Monkey Poison, created in 2004, exemplifies the satirical overtones of Banksy’s renowned street art transferred to the realm of “high art.” Perched atop a tree branch, Banksy’s monkey intrudes upon a countryside vignette, guzzling gasoline from a carton labeled with a flammable sign.

READ ABOUT MONKEY POISON

#39. Flower Thrower Triptych, 2017

Christie’s New-York: 21 February 2024
The Collection of Sir Elton John
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 1,925,500

BANKSY, Flower Thrower Triptych | Christie’s (christies.com)

BANKSY
Flower Thrower Triptych, 2017
Spray paint on canvas in artist’s frame, in three parts
Left panel: 84.5 x 64.1 cm (33 1/4 x 25 1/4 inches)
Center panel: 106.7 x 76.2 cm (42×30 inches)
Right panel: 42.2 x 52.3 cm (16 5/8 x 20 5/8 inches
Overall: 106.7 x 203.2 cm (42×80 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Banksy 2017’ (on the reverse of the left panel)

READ ABOUT FLOWER THROWER TRIPTYCH

Thrower presents a variation of one of Banksy’s most iconic visuals entitled Love Is In The Air (Flower Thrower). The work shows a man with a bandana over his face frozen in the act of throwing neither a brick nor a Molotov cocktail, but a bouquet of flowers. This image conveys a message of peace. Except that is in this particular version, the visual is split into three parts, and presented as a deconstructed tryptic.

#40. Keep It Spotless

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 February 2008
Estimated: USD 250,000 – 350,000
USD 1,870,000

(#34) Banksy (defaced Hirst)

BANKSY
Keep It Spotless, 2007

Household gloss and spray-paint on canvas

214×305 cm (84 1/4 x 120 1/8 inches)

Signed and dated 2007 on the reverse

Keep It Spotless is a Damien Hirst Pharmaceutical (spot) painting which Banksy has defaced. This visual first appeared on a wall on Chalk Farm Road, London in 2006. It portrays a woman dressed as a maid who is sweeping dirt under the cover of a brick wall.