U2 MAY earn up to €8 million from the sale of a painting by former New York graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Untitled (Pecho/Oreja)was painted in 1982, when the then 22-year-old artist was at the peak of his powers. The band jointly bought the painting in 1989, after bass player Adam Clayton spotted it in a New York gallery, the year after Basquiat died of a heroin and cocaine overdose.
The artwork will be auctioned by Sotheby's in London on July 1st, and the auction house says bidding is expected to start at about €5 million.
The striking 6ft square acrylic, oil stick and collage canvas has been hanging in the band's recording studios in the Dublin docklands for two decades.
U2 management did not respond to The Irish Times'inquiries about the reason for the sale of the painting.
Clayton was not the first musician to be enticed by Basquiat's work, said Alex Branczik, Sotheby's deputy director of contemporary art in London.
Basquiat was a musician as well as a painter, and he was embedded in the New York music scene - he briefly dated Madonna, and was friends with Andy Warhol. The last rock star to sell a Basquiat - Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich - earned $5.5 million in 2002 from the auction of another 1982 work, called Profit I.