This fall’s marquee auctions in New York and London proved just how high the market could go, both for blue-chip masterworks by the likes of Monet and Van Gogh as well as for figurative paintings by artists who are barely old enough to rent a car.

Much of this activity can also be tracked—sometimes even in advance of a big sale—on the Artnet Price Database. The search queries aren’t free, which means those running them have skin in the game, and changing rankings can offer a snapshot of business interests and activity in particular artists, especially on the secondary market.

Below, we bring you the list of the top-searched artists on the Artnet Price Database in October 2021. (Those who had the same number of searches are listed as tied.) 

​​Before we get into that, however, here is a selection of artists on the rise who haven’t cracked the most-searched list yet—but might soon. Some of these figures have had strong primary markets for some time, but are just beginning to gain traction at auction; others may be the flavor of the week for profit-hungry speculators. Either way, the spike in searches shows that their work is getting serious attention—and you’d be wise to keep an eye on where their markets are headed. 

Notable Fast-Risers

Louis Fratino (b. 1993)

Louis Fratino, Couple at Dusk (2018). Photo: courtesy of Jeff Bailey Gallery.

Louis Fratino’s work is nearly impossible to get on the primary market, which helps explain why the young painter has shattered estimates every time his work has hit the auction block this year. The Brooklyn-based artist, who is represented by Sikkema Jenkins & Co. in New York and Ciaccia Levi in Paris, is known for intimate male nudes that draw from both art history and his own queer community.

A Lucian Freud-esque portrait of a man in repose sold in an online sale organized by Sotheby’s London last month for £40,320 ($55,468), almost six times its £7,000 high estimate. (All final prices include buyer’s premium, while estimates do not.) Fratino’s auction record, set in a Sotheby’s Hong Kong evening sale on October 9, is $153,763. It is perhaps not surprising that the artist hadn’t surfaced in the Artnet Price Database this time last year; his works only began hitting the auction block in 2021. Last month, he commanded 71 searches.

Reggie Burrows Hodges (b. 1965)

Reggie Burrows Hodges, For the Greater Good (2019). Courtesy of Phillips.

Reggie Burrows Hodges, who was born in Compton, California, and lives in Maine, represents something of a departure for today’s youth-obsessed market. He is having a breakout year in his (gasp!) mid-50s. With acrylic and pastel on raw canvas, the artist renders everyday scenes of Black figures playing sports, biking, or swimming. His muted palette makes his compositions feel as if they are taking place behind a veil of memory. Last month, his painting of a tennis match sold for £441,000 ($606,685) at Phillips London, almost nine times its £50,000 high estimate.

His success caught the market by surprise: in September 2021, Hodges had zero searches in the Artnet Price Database. That number grew to 23 the following month. His streak continued last week, when a portrait fetched $567,000 at Phillips New York, smashing its estimate (already heftier than the month before) of $100,000 to $150,000. Hodges earned a prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation grant in 2020 and a solo show at New York’s trendsetting Karma gallery earlier this year. He’ll be the subject of a solo exhibition at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in 2022.

Lukas Duwenhögger (b. 1956)

Lukas Duwenhogger, Slowly Please, Keelaynak (2002). Courtesy of Sotheby’s London.

The German-born, Istanbul-based painter has appeared at auction sporadically over the course of his career (like Burrows Hodges, he has been at this for a while). But his work has started to attract heavyweight interest—some might call it speculation—this year with the estimate-busting sale of his rosy-hued interior Rezalet (Impertinence) (1998) for $649,200 at Sotheby’s new-art focused the Now evening sale in New York on November 18. Matthew Maclean described the Duwenhögger “look” in a 2016 Frieze review as “rich in mustards, mauves, dusty pinks, and chartreuse, [it’s] a union of Renoir and Rainer Werner Fassbinder: woozy, momentarily acidic, but fundamentally gentle.” This time last year, Duwenhögger drew exactly zero searches in the PDB; in September 2021, that number climbed to 11, and it reached a high of 25 ahead of the Sotheby’s sale in October. 

Baldur Helgason (b. 1984)

Baldur Helgason, Portrait of the Man Waiting (2018). Image courtesy Sotheby’s.

If you’ve been reading this series regularly, you may have come to expect to encounter at least one artist each month who paints cartoonish figures doing things like riding bicycles or playing soccer (see: Javier Calleja, Edgar Plans, Oli Epp). This month’s example: Baldur Helgason. The Chicago-based Icelandic painter is perhaps best known for his portraits of a recurring, grimacing Popeye-like character (though he paints other big-eyed gentlemen and a few ladies, as well).

Like his peers on previous iterations of this list, Helgason has developed a fan base in Asia, where his paintings are increasingly sought-after at auction. A painting of a big-eyed cartoon figure peering over a man in a suit fetched HK$403,200 ($51,795), around double its high estimate, at Sotheby’s Hong Kong last month. Helgason—whose works echo the style of Chicago Imagist Ed Paschke—began to register on the Artnet Price Database this fall, when he drew 11 searches in September and 19 in October. 

Isshaq Ismail (b. 1989)

Isshaq Ismail, Nkabom 1 (2019). Courtesy of Phillips.

Within the past two months, Issaq Ishmail has gone from never having appeared at auction to having six works smash their estimates to smithereens. Last week’s New York sales served as a test of whether his boldly colored, thickly impastoed figuration, which he has described “infantile semi-abstraction,” would continue to draw international interest after a rollocking debut in October’s London auctions. Now, we have an answer. The artist’s deep blue Head 13 (2020) fetched $252,000 at a Sotheby’s day sale, roughly 10 times its $20,000-to-$30,000 estimate. The same week at Phillips, another work with the same estimate sold for $201,600.

While this kind of price ascent in such a short time is a telltale sign of speculation, Ismail is part of a new generation of Ghanaian artists making waves and has been championed by dynamo curator and dealer Destinee Ross-Sutton, who included him in her 2020 Christie’s exhibition “Stay It Loud.” Like his prices, his PDB searches also had one of the steepest jumps we’ve seen in recent memory, from zero in September to 51 in October. 

300 Most-Searched Artists in the Artnet Price Database, October 2021