Bob Dylan valuation
Has drawn and painted seriously since the 1960s, and exhibits it as work rather than memorabilia.
Bob Dylan was born in Duluth, Minnesota in 1941 and has drawn throughout his life; the self-portrait on the cover of Self Portrait in 1970 and the drawings in Writings and Drawings predate any exhibition by decades.
What a work by Bob Dylan is worth
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation is free, made online from the photographs you send, and it commits you to nothing. We act for sellers across the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States.
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Bio
Bob Dylan was born in Duluth, Minnesota in 1941 and has drawn throughout his life; the self-portrait on the cover of Self Portrait in 1970 and the drawings in Writings and Drawings predate any exhibition by decades. The Drawn Blank Series began as sketches made on tour between 1989 and 1992, published as a book and then, from 2007, reworked in colour for exhibition in Germany. Later bodies of work include The Brazil Series, The Asia Series, Mondo Scripto — handwritten lyrics with accompanying drawings — and large welded iron gates made from salvaged farm machinery. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016.
Almost everything that trades is editioned, and the editions are the point of confusion: the Drawn Blank images exist in multiple colourways, each its own numbered edition, printed as giclee on paper or canvas at several sizes, so image, colourway, medium, size and edition all need establishing before a valuation means anything. Signature is normally in pencil or on the reverse of canvas works, with a certificate from the publisher. Unique paintings and the ironwork are far scarcer. The music-memorabilia market and the art market value this work differently.
The exhibitions, and the autopen
The first exhibition of the paintings, The Drawn Blank Series, opened at the Kunstsammlungen in Chemnitz in 2007. Gagosian showed The Asia Series in New York in 2011, the National Portrait Gallery in London showed twelve pastel portraits as Face Value in 2013, and the Halcyon Gallery in London has shown the welded iron gates, Mood Swings, in 2013, The Beaten Path in 2016 and Mondo Scripto in 2018. Retrospectrum, the largest retrospective, opened at the Modern Art Museum in Shanghai in 2019 and went on to Miami and to the MAXXI in Rome.
In November 2022 Dylan apologised for having used an autopen to sign books and artworks sold as hand-signed since 2019. A signature on a work from those years should be checked against the publisher's records, and for any Dylan edition the paperwork matters as much as the signature.
Big Pink, The Brazil Series and the iron
Dylan's painting was first seen in public on the cover of the Band's Music from Big Pink in 1968, and his own albums Self Portrait, in 1970, and Planet Waves, in 1974, carried his paintings on their covers. Random House published Drawn Blank, a book of his drawings, in 1994, and the Chemnitz exhibition of 2007 showed more than 200 watercolours and gouaches worked up from them. The National Gallery of Denmark showed The Brazil Series, 40 large acrylic paintings, from 2010 to 2011.
When The Asia Series opened in 2011, some of the paintings were found to follow published photographs closely, including pictures by Dmitri Kessel and Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Magnum confirmed that Dylan had licensed the reproduction rights. Revisionist Art, in 2012, reworked the covers of magazines such as Playboy. He welds his gates and sculptures from farm tools, gears, chains and axes, and made them for family and friends for thirty years before showing any. Portal, an iron archway, stands at the entrance of MGM National Harbor in Maryland, and Rail Car, a wrought-iron freight car on rails, was installed at Château La Coste in Provence in 2022.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
