Banksy mural rescued from a Red Hook warehouse wall on view at Brookfield Place
Courtesy of Guernsey’s
In a decade-long story with elusive British graffiti artist Banksy at its heart, an upcoming Guernsey’s auction on May 21 will bring a 7,500-pound chunk of a Red Hook, Brooklyn warehouse to The Winter Garden at Brookfield Place. An outer wall of the warehouse in question was the site of a warehouse-wall-sized work created by Banksy in 2013, titled “Battle to Survive a Broken Heart,” consisting of a bandaged red heart-shaped balloon. The painting bears the distinction of being the only one of his works that the artist has gone back to retouch after its completion.
According to a New York Times recounting of the event, the story began in 2013 when Vassilios Georgiadis, the owner of the aforementioned Brooklyn warehouse, encountered a stranger’s van parked outside the property and offered the van’s driver a safer spot to briefly park his vehicle. The stranger–unbeknownst to the building owner–turned out to be Banksy, who returned the kindness by returning under the cover of night to create the bright balloon mural on the warehouse wall.
Shortly after its creation, rival artist/Banksy antagonist “Omar NYC” defaced the painting by tagging his own name over the heart as onlookers booed. In a rare follow-up, Banksy returned to touch up the defaced mural–reportedly the only time he has ever done so.
The Banksy mural was subsequently tagged by several rivals and attracted throngs of Banksy-seekers. An angry neighbor, weary of the attention, even attempted to smash it with a sledgehammer, prompting Georgiadis to hire guards to protect the work.
To keep the work from being destroyed, a massive section of the wall containing the painting was removed from the building and stored by the owner’s family in a climate-controlled Long Island City warehouse since 2014. Georgiadis died of heart disease a few years later, and the warehouse was eventually demolished.
An audio guide at banksy.co.uk describes the piece as an “iconic representation of the battle to survive a broken heart. It’s an uplifting visual poem to that most fragile of human emotions that seem to move within us as if on a soft breeze.”
The six-foot-by-nine-foot section of the warehouse wall will be offered at a live auction by Guernsey’s, to be held at The Winter Garden at Brookfield Place and online via LiveAuctioneers.com and Invaluable.com on May 21, 2025.
“Battle to Survive a Broken Heart” will be on display at 230 Vesey Street starting April 22 until it heads to auction.
Georgiadis’ family will donate some of the proceeds from the auction to the American Heart Association in his honor.
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