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“I have a lot of faith in the art market,” he added. “It’s perhaps the last frontier where the best of the best will not go the way of the rest of the economy.”

The painting depicts a black boxer with his hands raised in victory against a background filled with Basquiat’s signature graffiti scrawl. Ulrich bought the piece after seeing it in a show in Vienna. The work starred as a centerpiece in the 2005 Basquiat retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum, which moved on to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

To promote the sale of the painting to an international audience, Christie’s is currently displaying it in its King Street galleries in London. The showing has been calculated to closely precede the Frieze Art Fair, which opens next week. The painting has also been given the cover of the sales catalog for the New York auction on Nov. 12. Brett Gorvy, a co-head of Christie’s postwar and contemporary art department, said the painting could bring in $12 million to $16 million.

This is the last of Ulrich’s Basquiats, the drummer said, marking the end of an era. His collecting has gone in a different direction, from collecting the heavy hitters at auctions to investing in emerging artists by solely buying from galleries.