Stories

Wayne Thiebaud's paintings had $53 million in auction sales in 2022, with a new show at the Fondation Beyeler and growing international interest, how high can it go?

Emily Mae Smith rose as one of the stars of the 2021 season. A female artist, a figurative painter, and a contemporary Surrealist memorably skewering identity and gender, Smith was both a fresh take and fit the mold for market interest.

Huang Yuxing's abstract landscapes have garnered the consistent support of galleries, collectors, and institutions drawn his bubbles, pines, and rivers.

Claude Monet sold $451 million worth of art in the first half of 2022. Another $350 million in Monets are coming to market in Fall 2022 with the Paul G. Allen collection.

If you had told anyone six months ago that a painting by Lynne Drexler would be offered at auction in Los Angeles with a low estimate of $500,000, the response would have been laughter. But this week Bonhams announced it would be offering Grass Symphony from 1962 at its Los Angeles sale on September 14th with a $500,000 low estimate.

Retrospectives for Bridget Riley and Sean Scully show the fertility of simplicity. Figuration may still dominate painting but two retrospectives this Summer remind us that there is a generation of abstract painters who are still receiving recognition.

In May of this year, Christie’s sold a 1981 work by A.R. Penck for $567,000 during the New York sales cycle. The price was the second highest price achieved for the artist’s work.

When Scott Kahn’s first work of art came up at auction in Hong Kong last November at Phillips— and sold for nearly a million dollars—it seemed like the end of a long saga. And it was. The 76-year-old artist had been without a gallery for a decade and a half.

Through museum shows and Instagram posts, Salman Toor, Doron Langberg, and Jenna Gribbon have emerged as leaders of a movement of Contemporary artists employing figurative painting to further queer representation. One young artist in this movement, Louis Fratino, has generated a strong collector base

There are some obvious and not so obvious names on our list of artists with some of the most dynamic sales in the second quarter of 2022. For example, Anna Weyant’s name is no surprise to anyone who followed the May auction season in New York. Nor is Ernie Barnes, for that matter.

If you want to see the power of a global gallery to establish demand and build stronger prices, even for an artist with a twenty-year track record, look no further than Katherine Bernhardt.

Multiple trending artists see up to 8 lots hit the block across this week’s Paris and London sales. Caroline Walker, Stanley Whitney, Simone Leigh, and more rise to the top