Bob Dylan’s Paintings Come To London

BOB DYLAN's portraits will go on show in Britain for the first time later this month, at a new show to be held at the National Portrait Gallery.The display will feature 12 of the influential musician's most recent artworks - none of which have been exhibited before.

Dylan has sketched and drawn since he was a child, but only began exhibiting his work six years ago.His art has since appeared at shows in Copenhagen, New York and Milan.Art historian John Elderfield - who helped bring the collection to London - compared the paintings to Dylan's music:"[They are] products of the same extraordinary, inventive imagination, the same mind and eye, by the same storytelling artist, for whom showing and telling - the temporal and the spatial, the verbal and the visual - are not easily separated."

Bob Dylan:Face Value will open on August 24, and close on January 5.It is curated by Sarah Howgate, who also put together last year's popular Lucian Freud Portraits exhibition - which was also exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, of which the Duchess of Cambridge is a patron.

"Bob Dylan is one of the most influential cultural figures of our time," said National Portrait Gallery director Sandy Nairne."He has always created a highly visual world, either with his words or music, or in paints and pastels.I am delighted that we can now share these 12 sketches which were made for display at the National Portrait Gallery."