The Women Artists Market Report 2024

The big picture

Looking at all commercial actions on Artsy in 2023, we found that 25% of inquiries on for-sale artworks were for works by women artists. As the chart here shows, works by male artists, in contrast, accounted for 71%. (The remaining 4% is split between nonbinary artists, collectives, and those without gender specifications.)

Though these numbers are hardly inspiring, they’re inevitably skewed by the artists with the highest volume of available works on Artsy, many of whom are white men (such as Andy Warhol). So, we narrowed the data to focus only on ultra-contemporary artists and found that women artists’ works accounted for a greater proportion—35% of all inquiries. And when we narrowed down much further to Gen Z artists (born in or after 1997), we found a promising picture of parity: Women artists’ works account for 51% of inquiries.

Though the sample size inevitably narrows as we zoom into these younger generations of artists, it is notable to see a parallel of what we found last year in the auction market: The younger the artists, the greater the balance of commercial interest across genders. Now, on to the artists.

In-demand women artists

The women artists with the most volume of commercial interest on Artsy in 2023 are well known—including Tracey Emin, Etel Adnan, and Helen Frankenthaler. The inclusion of these artists, acclaimed and beloved in museums, galleries, and at auction, is no surprise. However, in the chart above, we feature a less predictable pool of women artists with the most year-over-year growth in inquirers on Artsy from 2022 to 2023.

Unsurprisingly, given the market’s penchant for newness, the 20 artists featured are primarily emerging names—the average birth year is 1982. Seven are based in New York, followed by four in London. There is a relatively broad distribution in terms of nationality, with four American artists, two British artists, and two artists of Swedish descent, while the rest all hail from different countries. The majority (13) of artists are white, with four artists of Asian descent, two Black artists, and one Latinx artist.

Eleven of these artists, including Laura Berger, who leads the list, work primarily in figurative painting. The Chicago-based artist creates ethereal scenes, often monochromatic, filled with translucent figures caught in moments of embrace. Meanwhile, five of the featured artists are known for their abstract works, and three—Alicia Adamerovich, Camilla Engström, and Zoe McGuire—are also working on otherworldly paintings, including fantastical landscapes and transcendental visions of nature.

Trending women artists

Every day, Artsy users follow artists to get notified when new works are uploaded on the platform. This barometer for an artist’s popularity and commercial appeal, which does not rely on available inventory, is an interesting complement to inquiry data. We see follow counts rise when an artist opens a new show, appears in the press, or simply when their galleries upload their compelling new-to-market work.

This cohort of artists, almost entirely different from the previous group, skews slightly younger and more American, with 10 artists born in the U.S.

At the top of the list here is one of the most promising new stars of contemporary painting, Grace Carney. The Minnesota-born, New York–based artist is becoming increasingly known for her hulking paintings, at once tumultuous and mesmerizing, in which abstraction gently commingles with the human form, thanks to a masterful handling of paint and color. Carney gained representation with P.P.O.W last year and recently closed her first solo show at the Tribeca gallery.

Gen Z women artists

Inspired by the parity we’re seeing among Gen Z artists gaining art market traction mentioned above, we’ve taken a closer look at the youngest adult generation—here, with an average birth year of 1998—currently garnering art world attention.

Notably, all of the artists on this list focus at least in part on figurative painting. More interesting, however, is the strong representation of artists hailing from the African continent here, in contrast to the subsets above. These include the Congolese artist Cinthia Sifa Mulanga, who was featured in The Artsy Vanguard 2023–2024 and is known for her collaged paintings featuring women and objects occupying striking architectural spaces; South African artists Zandile Tshabalala and Muofhe Manavhela, who each have respective, distinctive approaches to figurative painting; and Ghanaian artist Araba Opoku, whose striking acrylic paintings spanning nature, abstraction, and the figure have caught the eyes of tastemaking galleries kó and Gallery 1957.

Late women artists

Of the various subsets of the market discussed in this report, that of late women artists is arguably the steadiest, as names like Louise Bourgeois, Joan Mitchell, Georgia O’Keeffe, Leonora Carrington, Alma Thomas, and Agnes Martin have become favorites at auction houses, as well as at blue-chip galleries and institutions. In this chart, focused on the inquirer growth on late women artists’ works on Artsy, we see several other artists whose works have fetched strong auction results in recent years, including Leonor Fini, Ruth Asawa, and Elaine de Kooning.

Factors contributing to renewed interest in artists such as these include shows at galleries and institutions, as well as inclusion in biennials and mainstream cultural moments. Magdalena Abakanowicz, for example, was celebrated in an acclaimed Tate Modern exhibition last year, and her woven fiber sculptures graced the runway of Alexander McQueen’s spring/summer 2024 show at Paris Fashion Week in October. Spotlights like these not only boost the artist’s name recognition and market, but also prompt new discussions of their contributions to art history.

Conclusion

Though there are signs of positive change and artists breaking through traditional market biases across our data, there’s plenty of room for improvement. In addition to the lack of equity across gender, the lack of diversity is apparent, too. While we are seeing certain BIPOC and non-Western artists gaining a foothold, the majority of the artists represented here are white and Western. Further investigation is also needed to examine the representation of artists who identify as nonbinary or of other genders in the art market.

In sharing this data, we aim to add an additional layer of insight to a broader understanding of gender dynamics at play in the art market. With greater consideration of existing disparities, we can work towards a more inclusive, diverse, expansive art market that supports more artists.

Methodology

This report draws upon analysis of inquiry and follower data from Artsy’s online marketplace, from January 1, 2022 through December 31, 2023. Our examination centers on artist follows and inquiries about 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 2023, as well as the number of individuals inquiring on artists’ works.

For our analysis of year-over-year growth, we ensured that artists had at least 10 inquirers or followers in 2022, to avoid hyperbolic statements of growth. The one exception is the section on Gen Z artists’ growth in inquirers, where we lowered the threshold in order to account for artists’ newness to the market.

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. By analyzing both the aggregate inquiry data and the distinct artists attracting users, we aimed to uncover the women artists whose works resonated with Artsy users in 2023.