Best Selling Artist You Maybe Missing: Zhang Daqian

The high-end art market is, unsurprisingly, still mostly dominated by the EU greats; painter, Francis Bacon, and painter.

But within the last fifteen years, a sculpture was double knocked off high spot because of the world’s top merchandising creator, dethroned 1st by Warhol in 2007, and so once more in 2011 by the Chinese artists lesser best-known within the western world—Zhang Daqian.

Zhang is one in all the foremost prestigious Chinese creator of the 20 the century. Born in 1899, he pursued painting as a baby and would proceed to be heavily influenced by the artistic movement.

Though family names in China, Zhang went comparatively overlooked elsewhere—until 2011, once the art world knowledgeable about a giant organisation. Despite generating a complete of over $320 million in sales, sculpturer that year was relegated to 3rd place, once Zhang Daqian paintings and another Chinese artist generated over $500 million and $445 million severally. Sales of these two Chinese artists’ works diagrammatic between 4WD and five-hitter of the entire world auction market in 2011.

Picasso would come back to reign in a very spectacular fashion in 2015. His painting, Les femmes d’Alger, set a brand new record for the foremost high-ticket design oversubscribed at auction, going for $179 million and dwarfing Zhang Daqian paintings division of $34.7 million a year later.

China’s presence within the art-auction world has since waned, due in massive half to the government’s comprehensive anti-corruption drive and therefore the speed of the Chinese economy. That said, Zhang and energy stay square measure still among the variety of artists to show over $1 billion at auction since 2006, earning them a spot within the prime ten most profitable artists within the last decade.

Chinese art began to build a little comeback last year, with several processing their estimates away in auctions. A piece attributed to Gu Quan, Cinq Cent Luohan, was calculable at $89,296, however, concluded up merchandising for $5,469380—61 times its calculable worth. Wang Gai’s Landscape and Figures oversubscribed for $420,000, thirty-five times its calculable worth of 12,000.