デヴィッド・ボウイさんの絵画発掘、競売で予想超える入札額　カナダ

【トロントＡＦＰ＝時事】寄贈品を整理・販売するカナダの店で先ごろ見つかった英歌手、故デヴィッド・ボウイさんの絵画作品が競売に出品され、激しい入札合戦となっている。競売はトロントのオークション会社「カウリー・アボット」が主催している。（写真は英ロック歌手デヴィッド・ボウイさんのろう人形。ドイツ・ベルリンにて）
　出品された小さな絵画作品は「Ｄ　Ｈｅａｄ　ｓｅｒｉｅｓ」として知られるシリーズのうちの一つ。１９９５～９７年に制作されたこのシリーズで描かれているのは、ボウイさんの別人格である「ジギー・スターダスト」や友人、知人らのポートレートだ。
　トロントの北方約３００キロの小さな村の寄贈品再販店から５カナダ・ドル（約４５０円）で購入されたという作品の裏には、ボウイさんのイニシャルのサインが入っている。
　競売主催者は、予想落札価格を９０００～１万２０００カナダドル（約８０万～１１０万円）としていたが、開始直後の入札価格は１万５０００カナダドル（約１３０万円）を超え、予想を既に上回っている。競売はオンラインで２４日まで開催されている。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2021/06/21-11:36）

A painting by British pop icon David Bowie recently discovered at a Canadian store that resells donated goods had frantic bidders lining up Tuesday for a chance to own it.
The computer and acrylic collage on canvas is part of the so-called D Head series of portraits of the Ziggy Stardust rocker himself, his friends and others that he painted between 1995 and 1997.
It is signed on the back with his initials.
Opening bids of more than Can$15,000 (US$14,000) blew past Toronto auction house Cowley Abbot's estimated Can$9,000 to Can$12,000 valuation of the diminutive artwork.
The online auction closes on June 24.
We were very excited to discover that the artwork was original and authentic, auctioneer Rob Cowley told AFP. We are fans of David Bowie's work and it is very exciting to bring an artwork by him to the market.
The 24 by 20 centimeter painting of a pale figure dressed in teal clothes, with teal and red hair on a crimson background, was originally sold through a website around 2001.
It somehow found itself two decades later at a donations store in South River, Ontario -- 300 kilometers north of Toronto. There, an anonymous buyer paid Can$5 for it.
Bowie attended art school and was an avid collector. His estate fetched tens of millions of dollars after his death in January 2016 for some 350 works from his collection -- including by Basquiat, Henry Moore and Damien Hirst.
But his own artworks, according to Cowley, rarely go on sale.
Starting with Space Oddity in 1969, Bowie scored hit after hit over more than four decades, ranging from The Jean Genie and Heroes in the 1970s to Let's Dance and Modern Love in the 1980s to more recent hits like 2013's wistful Where Are We Now?
Many of these became era-defining hits around the world while successively defining what it meant to be a music legend.
Two days after the release of his 25th studio album, Blackstar, on his 69th birthday, Bowie died of cancer.