DEATH NYC Magritte Coca-Cola Son of Man 7/100 Signed Ltd Ed Art Print COA: Collector Guide — What It Is, What It Is Worth
What do you get when René Magritte’s most famous surrealist painting meets the world’s most recognized commercial logo? You get DEATH NYC’s Magritte Coca-Cola Son of Man — a hand-signed, limited edition print from an edition of 50–100 copies, individually numbered, and shipped with a gold embossed Certificate of Authenticity. Retailing at $100 at Gauntlet Gallery, this print stacks Magritte’s iconic bowler-hatted figure against Coca-Cola’s unmistakable red-and-white visual identity, turning a century of surrealism and a century of consumer culture into a single image that neither side can ignore. Whether you are new to street art collecting or a seasoned buyer, here is everything you need to know about this piece before you decide.
The Cultural Collision
René Magritte painted The Son of Man in 1964 as a self-portrait obscured by a floating green apple — the face hidden, identity erased, the viewer left to wonder what lies behind the mask. DEATH NYC takes that tension and detonates it with a different kind of mask: the Coca-Cola brand. In this print, the composition of Magritte’s original is retained — the suited figure, the grey sky, the stone parapet — while Coca-Cola iconography invades the frame. The hard commercial red bleeds in. The cursive script appears. The collision is jarring in exactly the way it is supposed to be.
The meaning compounds the longer you look. Magritte was asking whether anything about a person can be truly known. DEATH NYC asks whether any image in the modern world exists outside the logic of branding. The bowler hat, traditionally a symbol of bourgeois respectability, now shares the canvas with a corporation whose logo is recognized by more humans than any other symbol on earth. Surrealism and capitalism, it turns out, have always had more in common than either would like to admit. The result is visually striking because both source elements are instantly legible — you know the painting, you know the logo — and their overlap produces friction that rewards the eye.
Death NYC: The Artist
Death NYC is an anonymous street artist who began working publicly around 2010–2012, based in New York City. The pseudonym and the visual language arrived at the same moment: bold graphic overlays on recognizable imagery, distributed first as wheat-paste street art and later as signed limited edition prints for collectors. The influences are easy to trace — Banksy’s culture-jamming, Warhol’s flat appropriation of commercial logos, Basquiat’s willingness to place high and low culture in the same frame without apology. Death NYC synthesizes all three into a practice that is simultaneously accessible and confrontational. The work is commentary on consumerism, celebrity culture, and the way branding colonizes everything it touches, including the art that tries to critique it.
What distinguishes Death NYC from artists who simply reproduce familiar imagery is the specificity of the combinations. Each print is a proposition: this icon plus this icon equals this argument. The artist signs each piece by hand and dates it, maintaining editorial control over a catalog that now spans hundreds of distinct motifs — Disney characters, luxury fashion houses, canonical paintings, global celebrities, anime figures — all subjected to the same collision logic. Editions are kept small deliberately. The scarcity mirrors the street art tradition where a paste-up exists in one place at one time and then disappears.
Edition and Authentication
This print is hand-signed and dated by Death NYC directly on the print surface. The edition size is 50–100 copies, and each piece is individually numbered — this specific copy carries the designation 7/100. The physical dimensions are 18 x 13 inches, printed on premium stock with sharp ink saturation that holds the contrast between Magritte’s muted grey-green palette and Coca-Cola’s hard commercial red.
Authentication centers on the gold embossed COA card included with every authentic Death NYC limited edition release. The embossed seal is physically raised — run a finger across the surface and you will feel the texture. Flat printed seals or foil stickers that sit flush with the card surface indicate a reproduction, not an original. In addition to the seal, look for the hand-written numbering on the print itself, which should match the edition information on the COA. Gauntlet Gallery sources directly and includes the original COA with every sale.
Why Collectors Buy This
The cross-collector appeal of this specific print is unusually broad. Magritte enthusiasts and surrealism collectors are drawn to it as commentary on a painting they already care about. Coca-Cola memorabilia collectors — a large and active community — find branded art prints a natural extension of their existing acquisitions. Street art buyers who track Death NYC’s catalog recognize this motif as sitting at the intersection of two iconic source materials that rarely share the same canvas. And general pop art collectors recognize the Warhol lineage immediately.
At $100, this print sits at the accessible entry level of the signed limited edition street art market, where the barrier to participation is low and the upside is real. Popular Death NYC motifs in small editions of 30–100 copies have regularly achieved 2x to 5x appreciation within 12–24 months on the secondary market, particularly pieces that combine high-art references with commercial branding — which is exactly the category this print occupies. The numbered status (7/100), the hand signature, the gold COA, and the mint condition are all factors that secondary market buyers weight positively. At $100 retail, the risk-adjusted case for acquisition is straightforward.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this Death NYC print authenticated?
Yes. Every authentic Death NYC limited edition print comes with a gold embossed Certificate of Authenticity card. The gold seal is physically raised — it has a tactile texture you can feel with your fingertip. Counterfeit COA cards typically use a flat printed or foil-sticker seal that feels flush with the card surface. In addition to the COA, the print is hand-signed and individually numbered by the artist, confirming it is an original limited edition release.
How many copies of this Death NYC print exist?
This print is from an edition of 50–100 copies. The hand-numbered designation (7/100) on the piece confirms both the edition size and this copy’s individual number, giving collectors full transparency about scarcity.
What is this Death NYC print worth?
The current retail price is $100 at Gauntlet Gallery. On the secondary market, popular Death NYC motifs in editions of 30–100 have regularly achieved 2x to 5x appreciation within 12–24 months, particularly prints combining high-art references such as Magritte with iconic commercial branding such as Coca-Cola. Condition, edition number, and COA completeness are the primary factors driving resale value.
