Owner Who Plans to Sell a Banksy Mural Steps Forward

The anonymous gas station operator whose shop walls were graced with a Banksy mural, which he subsequently cut out and put up for auction, has decided to come forward.

Eytan Rosenberg, 44, owned the garage on the corner of Beverly Boulevard and La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles with his family, including his father Josh Rosenberg and his sister Ronit Karben. In 2008, he was approached by a regular customer, Thierry Guetta, better known as the street artist Mr. Brainwash, who asked permission for a friend to paint on the walls.

“He didn’t say Banksy,” Mr. Rosenberg said in a phone interview late on Thursday afternoon. “He wasn’t trying to sell me on it and he didn’t try to hype it at all.”

He wouldn’t have known who Banksy was, anyway; the pseudonymous British artist was just gaining international acclaim. Still, he gave his permission for the painting to happen. It was stealthy.

“I think he came at 4 a.m.,” Mr. Rosenberg recalled. He checked his security feed for evidence of the elusive artist after seeing the piece the next day. “I went right to my cameras, and they were completely blank,” he said. His tech specialists were stumped: another Banksy mystery.

The mural, “Flower Girl,” showing a girl peering up at a security camera sprouting out of a stock, remained a source of local fascination for years, along with a similar piece on a wall at an adjoining car wash. “Garden Girl” depicts a girl with a watering can looking over a stem sprouting an antenna.That piece remains.

Once Banksy put up his stencils, “there was never any mention of what would happen subsequently” to them, said Michael Doyle, the consignment director at Julien’s Auctions, which is handling the sale of “Flower Girl.” “I’m assuming that was not really one of Banksy’s concerns at the time.” (A spokesperson for Banksy did not comment.)

After Josh Rosenberg died in 2009, Mr. Rosenberg and his family decided to sell the business; a Chevron franchisee bought it in 2012.

“I said, ‘I’ll sell you the location but I’m going to take the Banksy,’” Mr. Rosenberg recalled. He worried that if he didn’t cut it out, it would be demolished or painted over. So he spent around $80,000 to remove “Flower Girl” and repair the wall. “It was almost like a family heirloom at that point,” he said.

Nonetheless, he decided to part with it. “I would love to be able to keep it, but it’s owned by me and my sister,” he said. “It’s a large piece, and I’m not an art collector, and I really don’t know what to do with the piece.”

He does, however, have plans for the proceeds, which will be split with his sister. “This thing I see as a gift from God, or whatever higher power,” he said. “I’m not going to be greedy, I’m not going to be stingy. I plan to use the proceeds that I have to do other beneficial things - push it forward or whatever that term is. Let the good energy continue.”