Sotheby’s to Sell David Bowie’s Art and Furniture Collection

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Around 400 pieces from David Bowie’s private art and furniture collection, including work by Marcel Duchamp, Henry Moore, Damien Hirst and Jean-Michel Basquiat, will go on sale at Sotheby’s here in November. The sale will be preceded by a three-week exhibition from July 20 to Aug. 9; the exhibition will then travel to Los Angeles, New York and Hong Kong.

Mr. Bowie, who died in January, studied art in high school before turning to music full time, and remained passionately interested in art throughout his life. He integrated it into his music and performances through costumes, video design and album design.

In 1994 he joined the editorial board of the magazine Modern Painters, for which he interviewed many art world figures, including Balthus, Mr. Hirst, Tracey Emin, Jeff Koons and Julian Schnabel.

“He was an amazing intellect and had a very good take on art,” Karen Wright, then the editor of Modern Painters, said in an interview a few days after Mr. Bowie’s death. “I think his tastes evolved a lot over the years; he was quite conservative at the start, but became more adventurous.

Mr. Bowie spent much of his time in the 1990s creating his own art, producing paintings, drawings and sculpture, which he occasionally exhibited. None of his own works are in the Sotheby’s sale, which highlights his collection of modern and contemporary British art, with paintings by John Virtue, Stanley Spencer, Leon Kossoff and Patrick Caulfield, as well as work by contemporary African artists and pieces of outsider art.

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