David Wojnarowicz
Stencilled burning houses, wrote furiously about AIDS, and photographed his own mouth sewn shut.
David Wojnarowicz was born in New Jersey in 1954, was abused as a child, and was hustling on the streets of New York as a teenager. He made stencilled and collaged paintings on supermarket posters and found maps, photographed the Rimbaud in New York series, wrote Close to the Knives, and became one of the fiercest public voices during the AIDS crisis, suing a religious group that had distorted his work in a fundraising pamphlet. Untitled (Face in Dirt) and the image of his mouth sewn shut are the best-known photographs. He died of AIDS-related illness in 1992, aged thirty-seven.
A market that has grown substantially with the institutional reassessment of the period, with strong museum demand and genuinely limited supply. Photographs exist in editions, typically small, and edition, print date and whether a print is a lifetime one are decisive. Paintings and collages made on supermarket flyers, maps and found posters are unique and are physically fragile: cheap paper supports, spray paint and adhesives that were never intended to last, so condition is a real constraint. The estate and P.P.O.W. hold the archive and the exhibition record.
If you own a work by David Wojnarowicz
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 costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Write to info@whitebankfineart.co.uk, or start below.
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.