Artist Gerald Scarfe has put his personal archive of thousands of pieces of memorabilia from his artwork for the 1982 film, Pink Floyd – The Wall, for sale exclusively at San Francisco Art Exchange (SFAE). The announcement described it as “one of the most valuable collections of rock and roll artwork to ever be offered for sale.”
The film arrived three years after the release of Pink Floyd’s 1979 chart-topping double album of the same name.
Scarfe, 83, has agreed to make his entire collection – more than 3,000 items – available for sale.
The collection includes Scarfe’s original paintings, including iconic images from The Wall film including The Marching Hammers, The Teacher, The Flowers, The Giant Judge, Prosecuting Attorney, the final storyboard for the film, and an array of the imagery that appeared in the film.
From the announcement: Also in the collection is the entirety of the preliminary conceptual drawings and storyboards for major characters and scene sequences. Hundreds of collectible artifacts and documents from the film including such iconic items as the Pink masks worn by the children, the eagle airplane model the animators worked from in putting together the related sequences, the original Teacher, Mother, and Wife maquette models sculpted and painted, dozens each of painted movie cels created in developing the animated sequences and scripts.
“The sale of Gerald’s original for The Scream recently brought the highest price ever paid for the art of rock and roll worldwide,” said Jim Hartley, executor director at SFAE. “Now he wishes for it all to go into the hands of those that love it.”
Scarfe, who served as the film’s director of animation, said, “This is my personal collection. It is a time capsule; a treasure trove which tells the history of the making of Pink Floyd – The Wall from start to finish – from album to film. I kept notes, preliminary drawings, backstage passes, props, awards, photographs and cels. Also, original first drawings by Roger [Waters] and me of the iconic album cover, annotated scripts, storyboards and so on, together with my unpublished written notes about the band itself and many large watercolor and oil paintings I made for the animated sequences and design of the live action film sets.”
The Wall album, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, topped the U.S. sales chart for 15 weeks, and in 1999 was certified 23x Platinum. It remains one of the best-selling albums of all time, selling over 19 million copies between 1979 and 1990 in the U.S. alone. The film was critically acclaimed when it was released in 1982 and won BAFTAs for Best Original Song and Best Sound. Scarfe developed the film’s entire visual environment before the project began and his characters became a mixture of live-action and animated imagery, all of which played an integral role in the surreal narrative.
Related: A new Pink Floyd collection arrives Dec. 13
Scarfe is one of the world’s most famous political cartoonists and caricaturists whose work has been seen in The Sunday Times and The New Yorker for decades. His artworks reside in the permanent collections of the Tate Gallery, National Portrait Gallery and the Parliamentary Art Collection in London, as well as the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.
San Francisco Art Exchange are known for record-breaking sales of album cover related artwork, and has represented such revered artworks as the originals for albums by the Beatles (Abbey Road and Rubber Soul), the Rolling Stones (Let it Bleed), Pink Floyd (Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and Animals), Genesis (Lamb Lies Down on Broadway), the Cars’ (Candy-O), and more.
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