Artwork by jazz trumpet maestro Miles Davis to feature at city auction
A RARE artwork painted by the 'Picasso of Jazz' Miles Davis could fetch £12,000 at auction.
The abstract piece, White and Naked, is among the works that the legendary American trumpeter made after a minor stroke left him with a frozen hand in his 50s.
Doctors had advised Davis, who was unable to perform due to this affliction, to hold a pencil to help with his recuperation.
He sought advice from artist Jo Gelbard, who lived in his New York apartment building, and she later became his mentor, muse and lover.
Coralie Thomson, from Duggleby Stephenson auctioneers who will be putting White and Naked on sale, said art later became as important to Davis as his music.
She said: “It would change his life, quite literally.
“His request for advice led to friendship, romance and ‘The Prince of Darkness’, as he was known in the jazz world, being encouraged to move on from sketching to paint and canvas.
"For the next half dozen years, until his death at the age of 65 in 1991, Davis painted obsessively, indeed painting became as important to the great jazz trumpeter as music.”
Davis, regarded as one of the greats of 20th-century music, made his mark on the jazz scene after studying at the renowned Juilliard School, in New York, in 1944.
He went on to play with other luminaries of the era, including John Coltrane and Charlie Parker, before later experimenting with rock and funk.
When it came to art, Ms Thomson said Davis also shared an eclectic mix of different influences, from Russia, Spain and the US practitioners.
She said: “The art of Miles Davis is complex: Bold, colourful, geometric, abstract and expressionist.
"He acknowledged numerous influences, notably that of the Russian pioneer of abstraction Wassily Kandinsky, Picasso and the American street art meteor Jean Michel Basquiat as well as traditional African art.”
Ms Thomson said White and Naked previously belonged to a British collector after Gelbard had released some of Davis's works that she had been keeping.
White and Naked is expected to make £8,000 to £12,000 when it goes under the hammer in a fine art sale at the York Auction Centre on Friday May 10.