The Artsy Market Recap 2024

The most in-demand artists of 2024

This section looks at the artists who received the strongest year-over-year surges in artwork inquiries on Artsy in 2024. Inquiries on Artsy are messages from potential buyers to galleries about artworks they are interested in purchasing. As such, they are key barometers of commercial demand.

Artists experience surges in demand for several reasons. Their works might be featured in widely read publications or public events, or perhaps they have participated in a buzzy show or institutional exhibition that has made waves across the international art world.

For the leader of this year’s in-demand rankings, Slawn, it is a combination of several of these factors. The Nigerian artist—dubbed “the most talked-about young artist in the U.K.” by GQ, which named him a 2024 “Man of the Year”—has experienced a meteoric rise in profile within and beyond the art world this year. In addition to working on collaborations with the likes of Rolex and Louis Vuitton, the artist mounted his debut solo show at London’s Saatchi Yates in September; the show’s opening was one of the busiest in the city this year, with crowds sprawling into the genteel St. James’s neighborhood. The artist, whose works blend street art aesthetics with his Yoruba heritage and societal imagery, is also just 24 years of age: His star only looks set to rise. This December, the artist also had a Miami moment with another Saatchi Yates solo show and work featured at the esteemed Rubell Museum.

The breakout artists of 2024

New artists are foundational to the art world, including the Artsy ecosystem. Around 25,000 new artist pages are added to Artsy every year from every corner of the art world, ranging from emerging talents to underrecognized names uncovered by Artsy gallery partners.

This chart looks at the artists that have been added to the Artsy platform since November 2023, ranked by the number of inquiries their works have received from January to November this year. While some are in the nascent stages of their careers, these artists are already building impressive momentum on Artsy, reaching new audiences through online channels.

Leading the rankings is Danish artist Oliver Bak, who made a major career leap in September with a buzzy first show at Sprüth Magers in Berlin—a noteworthy debut taking place at one of the city’s leading commercial galleries during its art week. Bak’s mystical paintings pull together tensions and boundaries, mythology and reality. Sprüth Magers recently announced its representation of the artist, paving the way for more appearances with the tastemaking powerhouse.

The artists with the most stable markets on Artsy

In this section, we look at the artists who have consistently been among the top 10 artists with the most Artsy inquiries during each of the past five years.

Why five years? We wanted to understand how the top end of the Artsy marketplace had shifted throughout a period of significant economic volatility. This timeframe includes the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, which yielded recessions, inflation, and other economic changes around the world.

The chart shows the top 10 artists over the past five years and highlights the names that appear on the list all five years. While 11 names appear on multiple years’ lists, six appear every year: Andy Warhol, Banksy, Damien Hirst, Yayoi Kusama, David Hockney, and Alex Katz. This consistency in demand is an indicator of the artists with relatively stable markets, even across moments of economic uncertainty.

Warhol has remained the most resilient when it comes to commercial interest and performance. The artist tops the list three times in the past five years and never slips below fourth place, demonstrating the solid levels of demand for his oeuvre.

This is perhaps unsurprising for arguably the 20th century’s most famous artist, who continues to be the subject of a seemingly never-ending stream of new biopics, documentaries, and gallery shows that demonstrate his enduring relevance today. Crucially, Warhol is also an artist with an extensive body of work. It’s estimated that the artist produced more than 9,000 paintings and sculptures, almost 12,000 drawings, and more than 19,000 prints during his career. Price points for Warhol’s works also vary widely—prices listed on Artsy range from under $5,000 to seven-figure sums—making them accessible to a broad swathe of market participants. Works by the artist are also among the most commonplace in the market, from auctions to private sales, where prices remain strong.

In fact, a common thread among the most consistent artists on the list, along with their high public profiles, is their large bodies of work and range of price points. Banksy and Damien Hirst, who respectively have the second- and third-most stable top-end market demand of the past five years, have more than 4,000 and 5,000 artworks listed for sale on Artsy, respectively, as of November 2024.

The most sought-after artists by nationality

Artsy’s global marketplace hosts galleries from more than 100 countries and attracts collectors from more than 190. This is reflected in the composition of artists, too. In this chart, we look at the artist nationalities that have received the sharpest rises in year-over-year inquiries overall.

The list is topped by Indian artists, reflecting a major ascent for the country’s standing in the international art world. Indian artists have, in recent years, seen a surge in international recognition and interest in both the established and emerging segments of the market.

The more established Indian artists gaining traction include prominent names from the post-independence Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group and modernist movements of the 20th century. Several of the leading figures from these movements have become established blue-chip names at auction houses, and are exhibited worldwide. The two Indian artists with the most artwork inquiries on Artsy in 2024, Maqbool Fida Husain and Sayed Haider Raza, are leading figures in the modernist movement. They have also both been the subject of major institutional shows in recent years: Husain at the Venice Biennale, in an exhibition organized by Delhi’s Kiran Nadar Museum of Art this year, and Raza at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2023.

Complementing the commercial growth for India’s established artists is the groundswell of demand for the country’s emerging artists: Names such as Raghav Babbar and Tanya Goel (the latter of whom was featured in The Artsy Vanguard 2021) are among the leading younger names from India that saw strong levels of inquiries on Artsy this year.

The market for women artists’ works

In March, Artsy published the Women Artists Market Report, which examined in detail the current demand for women artists’ works, as well as the individual names gaining significant market momentum. As that report noted, the narrative when it comes to the position of women artists in the art market has remained largely unchanged in recent years: “Despite incremental progress, the art world’s historical affinity for white male artists continues to persist.”

The primary market data that we gathered for this report finds consistency with that claim. Some 29% of inquiries on Artsy overall in 2024 were for works by women artists. But while this figure is still far from market parity, it shows notable growth from the past five years: In 2019, the figure stood at 17%.

At the top end of the market, there are also signs of marginal improvement in the representation of women artists. Of the top 100 artists with the most commercial inquiries on Artsy in 2024, 13 are women, also representing a rise from previous years: In 2023, there were 11; in 2019, there were 7.

The top three women artists overall on Artsy based on the number of inquirers are Yayoi Kusama, Helen Frankenthaler, and Tracey Emin. Much like the earlier section on top artists overall on Artsy, we find a stability at the top end for women artists: In 2019, the top three women artists were also Kusama, Emin, and Frankenthaler.

Increased equity is most noticeable among younger artists. Our data shows an increased share of commercial interest for women ultra-contemporary artists, born in or after 1975. For this group, women artists have a 37% share of inquiries overall. The three leading ultra-contemporary women artists of 2024 on Artsy are Ayako Rokkaku, Inès Longevial, and Apolonia Sokol.

When we looked at the women artists with the highest year-over-year increases in demand over the past year, ultra-contemporary artists are in the top two slots. Leading the list is Charlotte Keates, who received a 645% increase in inquiries: The emerging artist, who works with Edinburgh’s Arusha Gallery, has found a burgeoning collector base for her paintings of 1960s- and ’70s-inspired architectural interiors. Keates is followed by Madeline Donahue, whose paintings and drawings depict tender scenes of motherhood.

Methodology

This report draws upon an analysis of primary market data from Artsy’s online marketplace from the period of January 1–November 11, 2024. Our examination centers on inquiries on artworks, which serve as a proxy for sales and market interest. The inquiry data we examined includes both the volume of inquiries placed on artists’ works on Artsy in 2024, as well as the year-over-year growth from 2023 to 2024 where stated.

For our analysis of year-over-year growth, we ensured that artists had at least 10 inquirers or followers in 2023, to avoid hyperbolic statements of growth.

The methodology employed seeks to provide an understanding of the art market dynamics of online collecting in the present, pinpointing trends in collector behavior. We acknowledge that the numbers represented here are impacted by the galleries that partner with Artsy, the volume of artists’ works on the platform, and the artists that are promoted via Artsy’s marketing channels.