David Bowie self-portrait sells for £22,500
A self-portrait by David Bowie has sold for a whopping £22,500 at auction.
The unique piece of rock memorabilia went under the hammer at Lyon & Turnbull's contemporary paintings sale in Edinburgh where it had been valued between £3,000 and £5,000.
An art school student during his teenage years and a keen visual artist, Bowie created the piece, DHEAD, for the fundraising ARTAID 98 exhibition in Edinburgh 18 years ago.
Many of Bowie’s paintings explore abstract faces and heads and are directly influenced by 1930s German Expressionist art.
Charlotte Riordan from Lyon & Turnbull said: "Best known of course as a singer/songwriter, Bowie's entire career was spent actively blurring the lines between the art forms of music, performance and design; the visual playing as big a part as the aural."
Bowie was a keen art collector with works by Damien Hirst, Odd Nerdrum, Gilbert and George, Harold Gilman, William Scott and Patrick Caulfield in his sprawling collection.
In an interview with the New York Times in 1998, Bowie said: “Art was, seriously, the only thing I’d ever wanted to own. It can change the way that I feel in the mornings.”