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Shredded Banksy painting back under the hammer

September 3, 2021

"Love is in the Bin" is expected to be sold for almost four times as much as it did only three years ago. A steep rise in art sales during the pandemic has seen several of Banksy's works sell for monumental sums.

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"Love is in the bin" by Banksy is carried by museum workers
'Love is in the Bin' by Banksy spent a period on display at the Frieder Burda Museum in Germany in 2019Image: Reuters/K. Pfaffenbach

Three years after it partially self-destructed immediately after being sold at auction, Banksy's"Girl with Balloon" is going back up for auction at Sotheby's for up to four times its original price.

Despite being half-shredded, the buyer of the work, now renamed "Love is in the Bin," proceeded with the October 2018 purchase.

"That surreal evening three years ago, I became the accidental — but very privileged — owner of 'Love is in the Bin'," the collector said in a statement published by Sotheby's on Friday.

"It has been an incredible journey to have been part of the story of how one of the most famous artworks in the world came to be, but now it is time to let the painting go."

The collector had lent the work, a painted version of one of Banksy's most famous stencils, to a museum in Baden-Baden, Germany for a month in 2019 so it could be viewed by the public.

Pandemic art boom

Sotheby's is setting a price estimate between 4 and 6 million pounds ($5.5-$8.3 million, or €4.6-€7 million) for the October 14 auction.

This will not be the only piece by the elusive British artist to fetch an eye-watering sum this year. Amid a pandemic art sale boom, in March, a Banksy painting honoring health care workers sold for 14.4 million pounds. The fee was donated by the artist to the UK's National Health Service.

The Art Market in Numbers

es/msh (AFP, Reuters)