David Bowie, Pop Star Who Transcended Music, Art and Fashion, Has Died at 69

David Bowie, the infiniteangeable, fiercely forward-looking songwriter who taught generations of musicians about the power of drama, images and personae, died Sunday, two days after his 69th birthday.

He died after an 18-month battle with cancer, according to a statement on Mr. Bowie’s social media accounts.

“David Bowie died peacefully today surrounded by his family,” a post on his Facebook page read.

The multitalented artist, whose last album, “Blackstar,” a collaboration with a jazz quintet that was typically enigmatic and exploratory, was released on Friday — on his birthday. He was to be honored with a concert at Carnegie Hall on March 31 featuring the Roots, Cyndi Lauper and the Mountain Goats.

He had also collaborated on an Off Broadway musical, “Lazarus,” that was a surreal sequel to his definitive 1976 film role, “The Man Who Fell to Earth.”

Mr. Bowie wrote songs above all about being an outsider: an alien, a misfit, a sexual adventurer, a faraway astronaut. His music was always a mutable blend: rock, cabaret, jazz, and what he called “plastic soul” but was suffused with genuine soul. He also captured the drama and longing of everyday life, enough to give him No.1 pop hits like “Let’s Dance.”

If he had an anthem, it was “Changes,” from his 1971 album “Hunky Dory,” which proclaimed:

“Turn and face the strange / Ch-ch-changes / Oh look out now you rock and rollers / Pretty soon now you’re gonna get older.”

Born David Jones on Jan. 8, 1947, in South London, Mr. Bowie rose to fame with “Space Oddity,” in 1969, and later through his jumpsuit-wearing alter ego Ziggy Stardust and another persona, the Thin White Duke. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.

Mr. Bowie was his generation’s standard-bearer for rock as theater: something constructed and inflated yet sincere in its artifice, saying more than naturalism could. With a voice that dipped down to baritone and leaped into falsetto, he was complexly androgynous, an explorer of human impulses that could not be quantified.

He also pushed the limits of “Fashion” and “Fame,” writing songs with those titles and also thinking deeply about the possibilities and strictures of pop renown.

Mr. Bowie was married to the international model Iman, with whom he had a daughter, Alexandria Jones.

In a post on Twitter, the musician’s son from an earlier marriage, Duncan Jones, said, “Very sorry and sad to say it’s true. I’ll be offline for a while. Love to all.

Mr. Bowie largely left the spotlight after a heart attack in 2004 brought to an abrupt end a tour supporting his album “Reality.” The singer experienced pain during a performance at a German festival and sought treatment for what he believed was a shoulder injury; doctors then discovered a blocked artery.

The following year, he performed with Arcade Fire, a band he championed. In 2006, he performed three songs in public for what would be the final time, at the charity Keep a Child Alive’s Black Ball fund-raiser at Hammerstein Ballroom in New York.