Christie's and Sotheby's will auction Banksy prints signed by the artist in September

Auction houses Christie's and Sotheby's in September will hold an online auction of prints of the famous British street artist Banksy. The estimated cost of reproductions of the most famous works of the King of street art with his signature is tens of thousands of dollars.

According to Sotheby's website, among the lots that will be offered to connoisseurs of contemporary art on September 6, there is a reproduction of the drawing “Girl with a Ball” (2004), for which it is planned to earn from $ 73 thousand to $ 97 thousand. Estimated cost of the print “Welcome to Hell” ( 2004) reaches $ 22-26 thousand, and “Pulp Fiction” (2004), in which the characters of the same film by Quentin Tarantino are depicted with bananas in their hands instead of pistols, $ 14.5-22 thousand.

For Sotheby's, whose representatives emphasize the growing public interest in Banksy's work, the upcoming auction will be the first online auction of the artist's works. At the same time, it was during the Sotheby's auction, traditional in its format, that Banksy arranged one of his most sensational performances. Last October, one of the reproductions of “The Girl with the Ball” was sold for £ 1.04 million ($ 1.36 million) and immediately after hitting a hammer fell under the knives hidden by Banksy at the bottom of the picture frame, which cut it into thin ribbons. The artist’s trick, after which the name of the work was changed to “Love in the Trash”, excited the art world, but the value of the nearly destroyed work as a result only grew.

Christie's online auction will run from September 10-24. As in the case of the Sotheby's auction, a full list of lots has not yet been announced, but it is known that it will include a reproduction of Banksy’s work “Choose a weapon”, estimated at $ 36-60 thousand, “Detention and search” ($ 24-36 thousand ) and "Soldiers of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament" ($ 18-30 thousand).

The British regard Banksy as a national treasure. The works of the artist, who raises in his work the issues of social inequality and hypocrisy of the authorities, are very popular among fans of contemporary art and collectors. Banksy still manages to keep his identity a secret - no one except his closest assistants knows for sure what he looks like and what his real name is.

Last year, the first Banksy exhibition in Russia was held at the Central House of Artists (CHA) in Moscow. For three months of work - from June 2 to September 2 - more than 300 thousand people visited it.