Over the past decade, the Chinese art market has seen tremendous growth, expanding to a size where it has made a significant impact on the global art auction landscape.
In fact, the Chinese art market is the third largest in the world, making up 19 percent of global art sales, according to the 2016 TEFAF Art Market Report. And it’s not only Chinese domestic art sales that drive interest. The Global Chinese Art Auction Market Report, compiled by artnet and the China Association of Auctioneers (CAA), asserts that overseas sales of Chinese art has more than quadrupled since 2009.
At the heart of the surging interest in Chinese contemporary art is, of course, the artists themselves. The country’s artistic styles are as rich and varied as the culture from which they emerge; ranging from contemporary painting by the likes of star artists Zeng Fanzhi and Liu Wei to the traditional illustrations of the 92-year-old artist Huang Yongyu. There are also prominent absences, most notably artist and activist Ai Weiwei, whose notoriety and international popularity is not reflected in strong cumulative auction sales.
So who are the artists that are driving the Chinese art market? To find out we scanned the artnet Price Database to determine the top selling living Chinese artists, ranked by total auction sales volume.
Zeng Fanzhi, The Last Supper (2001) sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong on October 5, 2013, for $23,269,070. Photo: artnet.
1. Zeng Fanzhi
Total sales volume: $444,759,162
Cui Ruzhuo, The Grand Snowing Mountain (2013). Courtesy Poly Auction Company.
2. Cui Ruzhuo
Total sales volume: $396,599,531
Zhang Xiaogang, Bloodline: Big Family No. 3 (1995) sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong on April 5, 2014, for $12,144,809. Photo: artnet.
3. Zhang Xiaogang
Total sales volume: $309,987,549
Fan Zeng. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
4. Fan Zeng
Total sales volume: $309,130,240
Zhou Chunya July. Photo: ChinaToday Gallery
5. Zhou Chunya
Total sales volume: $194,180,734
He Jiaying. Photo: Berlin ArtParasites via Facebook.
6. He Jiaying
Total sales volume: $170,438,996
Huang Yongyu. Photo: China Daily via Facebook.
7. Huang Yongyu
Total sales volume: $166,209,792
Yue Minjun Blue Sky and White Clouds (2013). Photo: Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris.
8. Yue Minjun
Total sales volume: $148,545,080
Liu Wei, The Revolutionary Family Series (triptych), 1994. The painting set an artist price record when it sold for $5 million at the Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary Asian Art Evening Sale in Hong Kong on April 3.
Photo: courtesy Sotheby’s.
9. Liu Wei
Total sales volume: $114,144,337
Liu Xiaodong, Disobeying the Rules (1996) sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong on Sunday, October 5, 2014, for $8,530,818. Photo: artnet.
10. Liu Xiaodong
Total sales volume: $111,698,788