Three Banksy works are the source of a dispute between John Brandler, a British specialist in street art, and Metamorfosi, a Rome-based enterprise that presents touring exhibitions. According to a report in the Guardian, Brandler loaned the works to Metamorfosi for shows in Italy and Switzerland but is awaiting overdue loan payments—as well as the return of the pieces—three years later.
After a two-year contract expired, the loan deal was extended with a monthly fee, Brandler says. But, as he told the Guardian, “within a few months, they were late paying the loan fee and they got to the stage where they were always about six weeks behind paying the loan fee. They’re now four months behind on the last payment. The show finished on 6 June … I still don’t have the final payment [and] I haven’t got my Banksys back.”
The three works by Banksy include Season’s Greetings, which features a little boy sticking out his tongue to eat polluted snow. The work was found on the side of a garage by the Port Talbot steelworks in Wales in 2018, and was purchased from the garage owner by Brandler. The two other pieces are Heart Boy, which depicts a boy painting a pink heart, and Computer Robot.
Brandler said that another Bansky dealer, the London-based Acoris Andipa, has been owed £45,000 (around $61,000) for curatorial services for over two years. Andipa told the Guardian, “I don’t know what we can do. I’ve had my lawyers on them.”
In a statement, Pietro Folena and Vittorio Faustini of Metamorfosi took issue with the claims, saying: “Metamorfosi is a well-established and prestigious company that organizes major exhibitions in Italy and around the world in collaboration with and with the support of leading museums.” They also said the company has paid the monthly installments and is still awaiting invoices and tax documentation for the last one.
Metamorfosi also said they tried to return the murals in June, and that Brandler told them that because of storage problems the company could keep the works until October. “This shows that Metamorfosi immediately initiated the procedures for returning the works,” said the company, which also stated that they are now returning the works by the end of September. As for Andipa’s claim, Metamorfosi said, “these are commercial matters that have no bearing on the issue raised.”
