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Banksy's Artwork From L.A. Gas Station To Be Auctioned Off in Beverly Hills
(Photo by osmany rodriguez via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr)
A Banksy piece of art on an L.A. gas station wall is up for grabs at a Beverly Hills auction tomorrow, but he's not the one making money off of it.
Julien's Auctions will sell the 9-feet-by-8-feet "Flower Girl" mural at the company's first "Street Art" sale, and auctioneers are expecting $300,000 or more for it, according to Associated Press.
A friend of a friend of Eytan Rosenberg, the gas station's owner, had asked Rosenberg if Banksy could paint a mural at his gas station back in 2008. Rosenberg didn't know who Banksy was at the time. The celebrated graffiti artist had painted the silhouette of a girl holding a flower basket and standing under a security camera, and Rosenberg removed it and put it in a frame when he sold the gas station last year. It was a feat for the owner to remove it as the brick wall weighed between 5,000 to 7,500 pounds, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Banksy's identity wasn't captured on the gas station's cameras though. "The surveillance cameras went black inside the gas station, [the owner is] still completely clueless as to how [Banksy] would pull that off,” Michael Doyle, Julien's Auctions consignment director told the Los Angeles Times.
The owner isn't the only one benefiting off of the British artist's work. Just this week, LAist reported on how Walmart had been selling Banksy knockoff prints on its website.
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