Hidden Banksy Art to Be Displayed by London Developer<br />It’s a moral obligation, isn’t it?”<br />He said he also doesn’t think that anyone today would choose to paint over the stencil: “If you look at Banksy’s work, as an artist of our era<br />and generation, you wouldn’t paint over a Monet, would you?”<br />Jo Brooks, a spokeswoman for Banksy, confirmed that there had been a piece of Banksy art in<br />that location, and said there had been no dealings with the developer.<br />Five years ago, Jonathan Ellis, a property developer, heard rumors<br />that a lost work by the mysterious graffiti artist known as Banksy was hidden under a layer of paint on a brick wall in a weed-choked plot.<br />“We haven’t even tried to get it authenticated by Pest Control because, from what we were advised, they don’t authenticate street<br />art,” Mr. Ellis said, “because what they don’t want us to do is get an authentication and sell it to the highest bidder.”<br />But Mr. Ellis said that was not his intention.<br />“We were building there, so we had to explain to the builders — without telling them what was underneath it —<br />that they had to protect this bit of wall,” Mr. Ellis explained.
