Soup Can (Original)

Warhol's can, Tesco's label

Soup Can is a single tin of soup, printed flat and frontal against a pale ground, the way Andy Warhol painted Campbell's in 1962. The difference is on the label. Where Warhol's cans carried the red-and-white Campbell's script, Banksy's carries the blue, red and white stripes of Tesco Value, the British supermarket chain's budget range. The product is Tesco Value Cream of Tomato Soup.

Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans, first shown in July 1962 in Los Angeles and now in the Museum of Modern Art, are 32 canvases, each 20 by 16 inches, each a different variety of soup in the same packaging. One catalog of Banksy's work points out that Banksy reverses the equation: Warhol gave 32 different soups in near-identical cans, while Banksy offers the same cheap tomato soup over and over in different colors.

The swap is the whole joke, and it lands on two targets at once. Warhol had made a mass-market product into high art; Banksy pulls the image back down to the discount aisle. Writers on the print read it as a comment on value in both senses, the price of soup and the price of art, and on class, because a Tesco Value tin signaled getting by rather than aspiring.

The print had a painted cousin. Banksy made a unique oil on canvas, Tesco Value Soup Can, in 2004. It was shown in London in October 2005 at Crude Oils, his exhibition of remixed masterpieces, and sold at auction in London in October 2017 for GBP 392,750.

Banksy and Pictures on Walls

Banksy has never publicly confirmed his identity. He started as a freehand graffiti artist in Bristol between 1990 and 1994 and, by 2000, had turned to stencils because they were so much faster to complete. His subjects were rats, apes, policemen, soldiers, children and the elderly, and his messages were often anti-war, anti-capitalist or anti-establishment.

The prints came through Pictures on Walls, known as POW, which its founders describe as a loose collection of artists, graffiti writers and illustrators who started producing and distributing their own art in 2003. Its first print, a Banksy called Have a Nice Day, is dated March 1, 2003. Its Girl with Balloon, released November 15, 2004, originally retailed for GBP 75.

POW issued Soup Can in 2005. The original colorway came in 50 signed and 250 unsigned impressions, with 10 signed artist's proofs. POW also printed a run of color variations, each in ten signed impressions, swapping the Tesco blue and red for combinations such as banana, lime and purple or violet, blue and tan. One catalog counts 28 colorways, counting the original colorway's ten proofs as the first. In 2006 Banksy extended the motif with Four Soup Cans, a grid of tins in four signed colorways.

POW announced in October 2017 that it would cease trading on December 31, 2017. Its own farewell is dry: 'inevitably disaster struck - and many of our artists became successful,' and 'despite attempts at price fixing regrettably some POW prints have become worth tens of thousands of pounds.'

Banksy's breakout year

2005 was the year Banksy became impossible to ignore. In March he hung his own doctored artworks inside the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History and the Brooklyn Museum. In May his fake cave painting, Peckham Rock, showing a figure pushing a shopping trolley, was hung in gallery 49 of the British Museum.

In August he painted nine images on the Israeli West Bank barrier, including a ladder going over the wall and children digging through it. In October he staged Crude Oils at 100 Westbourne Grove in Notting Hill, a shop turned gallery of reworked old masters, vandalized sculptures and live rats; the oil Tesco Value Soup Can hung there beside his versions of Monet, van Gogh and Hopper.

Sources disagree on the details of that show. One catalog gives the dates as October 22 to 24, 2005, and counts 164 rats while also describing about 200; other accounts describe a run of about a week or twelve days. The soup can belongs to the same burst of work: a print that put a Warhol icon through the same kind of remix as the oils.

From a few thousand to six figures

Public auction records for the signed edition begin in 2009. An impression numbered 44/50 sold in London in February 2009 for GBP 4,080 (about $5,900) and the same number came back that July for GBP 2,880 (about $4,745). In New York in October 2014 the impression numbered 33/50 brought $10,625.

Prices climbed with the rest of the Banksy market. In January 2018 the impression numbered 49/50 sold in London for GBP 22,500 (about $32,095); in July 2020 the same number sold in New York for $52,500. In April 2021 an online sale in London took GBP 75,000 (about $103,500) for 45/50, and on July 4, 2021, a signed impression sold at auction in Japan for JPY 20,125,000, about $182,955, the highest result one market record lists for the signed edition.

Then prices fell back. A signed impression sold in London in December 2023 for GBP 31,200 (about $39,245). The impression numbered 37/50 sold online in London on April 1, 2025, for GBP 30,240 (about $39,070), and the last number in the edition, 50/50, sold on March 31, 2026, for GBP 27,940 (about $37,280). An artist's proof, AP 8/10, brought GBP 40,640 (about $54,620) in London in September 2025.

The unsigned edition of 250 follows the same arc at lower levels. Its earliest listed sale, in London in October 2007, was GBP 2,278 (about $4,640). Its peak came in New Zealand in August 2020 at NZD 145,525, about $95,670, and by December 2024 an unsigned impression sold in London for GBP 15,360 (about $19,435). The color variations, at ten signed impressions each, have reached higher: one sold in London in March 2021 for GBP 94,500 (about $131,545).

How to tell what you are looking at

The entry tracked here is the original colorway, signed and numbered out of 50. That separates it from three close relatives: the unsigned impressions numbered out of 250, the ten signed artist's proofs, and the color variations, each signed and numbered out of 10. All share the same image and the 50 by 35 cm sheet.

The original colorway is the one that still reads as Tesco Value: blue, red and white. In the color variations the corporate colors disappear and only the architecture of the package is left, the oval, the lettering and the bands of the label.

Authentication runs through Pest Control Office, which Banksy set up in 2009 and which is the only body that can authenticate his commercial works. It certifies editions made for sale, such as the POW screenprints, and issues a certificate of authenticity. Dealers and collectors treat that certificate, along with condition, edition type and provenance, as central to any Soup Can.

Neither Banksy nor Pest Control licenses his images to third parties for commercial use. As one research guide puts it, 'Banksy doesn't do merchandise': a Soup Can on a photo canvas or a poster without a certificate is not a Banksy edition.

A liquid print with a long memory

Among Banksy prints, Soup Can is one of the most frequently traded titles. One market report lists it among the most active editions between 2018 and 2025, alongside Girl with Balloon, Trolleys, Morons and Flag, and singles out the signed Soup Can as one of the comparatively resilient segments during the recent correction.

The image also kept working for Banksy. In May 2011 he released a print of a smoking petrol bomb in a Tesco Value bottle, after a long-running local campaign against the opening of a Tesco Express supermarket. The budget label had become part of his vocabulary.

The print's staying power comes from how little it needs to explain. Anyone who knows Warhol gets the reference; anyone who has shopped in a British supermarket gets the punchline. That combination, plus a signed edition of only 50, is why it remains a reference point in the street-art print market.

The numbers

Medium

Screenprint in colors on wove paper

Dimensions

Sheet 50 x 35 cm (19 1/2 x 13 3/4 in.)

Edition

Original colorway: 50 signed, 250 unsigned, 10 signed artist's proofs; color variations in signed editions of 10

Publisher

Pictures on Walls, London

Catalogue raisonne

No catalogue raisonne number stated in the sources consulted

Current owner

Impressions are in private hands; no public collection holding is stated in the sources consulted

Timeline

1. Jul 1962

   Andy Warhol's 32 Campbell's Soup Cans canvases are first exhibited in Los Angeles.

2. Mar 1, 2003

   Pictures on Walls issues its first print, Banksy's Have a Nice Day.

3. 2004

   Banksy paints Tesco Value Soup Can, a unique oil on canvas.

4. Nov 15, 2004

   Pictures on Walls releases Girl with Balloon, originally priced at GBP 75.

5. 2005

   Pictures on Walls publishes Soup Can: 50 signed and 250 unsigned impressions of the original colorway, 10 signed proofs, and color variations in tens.

6. Oct 22, 2005

   Crude Oils opens at 100 Westbourne Grove, London, with the Tesco Value Soup Can canvas on view.

7. 2006

   Banksy extends the motif with Four Soup Cans, a grid of tins in four signed colorways.

8. Feb 24, 2009

   The signed impression numbered 44/50 sells in London for GBP 4,080, the earliest signed result in one market record.

9. May 2009

   Banksy announces that Pest Control, the handling service that acts for him, will be the only point of sale for new works.

10. Oct 2017

    The 2004 Tesco Value Soup Can canvas sells at auction in London for GBP 392,750.

11. Dec 31, 2017

    Pictures on Walls ceases trading.

12. Jan 25, 2018

    Signed impression 49/50 sells in London for GBP 22,500.

13. Jul 23, 2020

    Signed impression 49/50 sells again, in New York, for $52,500.

14. Aug 11, 2020

    An unsigned impression sells in New Zealand for NZD 145,525, about $95,670, the peak for the unsigned edition.

15. Jul 4, 2021

    A signed impression sells at auction in Japan for JPY 20,125,000, about $182,955, the highest listed result for the signed edition.

16. Apr 1, 2025

    Signed impression 37/50 sells online in London for GBP 30,240, about $39,070.

17. Mar 31, 2026

    Signed impression 50/50 sells online in London for GBP 27,940, about $37,280.

The world in 2005

• Mar 2005

  Banksy hangs his own altered artworks inside four New York museums, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

• May 5, 2005

  Labour wins a third term in the British general election with a much reduced majority of 66 seats.

• Jul 6, 2005

  London is chosen to host the 2012 Olympic Games, beating Paris 54 votes to 50.

• Jul 7, 2005

  Coordinated terrorist bombings on three Underground trains and a bus kill 52 people in London.

• Aug 2005

  Banksy paints nine images on the Israeli West Bank barrier.

• Sep 12, 2005

  England's cricket team wins the Ashes at home.

• Dec 19, 2005

  The Civil Partnership Act comes into force across the United Kingdom.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Soup Can (Original) is number 62 of 100 in the art entries of the FLOAT 100. 88 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (35 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The signed impression numbered 49/50 has been through the auction market twice: London in January 2018 for GBP 22,500, and New York in July 2020 for $52,500.
• Impression 44/50 sold twice within five months in 2009, and the price fell from GBP 4,080 to GBP 2,880.
• The highest listed price for an unsigned Soup Can came not from London or New York but from New Zealand, at NZD 145,525 in August 2020.
• Warhol painted 32 different soups in near-identical cans; Banksy's colorways show the same cheap tomato soup in different colors.
• Banksy came back to the Tesco Value label in 2011 with a print of a petrol bomb in a Tesco Value bottle.
• The publisher's own farewell joked that 'despite attempts at price fixing regrettably some POW prints have become worth tens of thousands of pounds.'