The World
Every school
that still
sets a price
The movements that shaped world art, the masters who define them, and the twelve highest prices ever paid in a public saleroom.
The twelve highest, ever
AB / WORLD RECORDS
Public auction results only. Private sales are reported at higher figures still, and because a private sale is never officially disclosed those numbers stay out of this table.
Leonardo da Vinci
Salvator Mundi, c. 1500
Gustav Klimt
Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, 1914 to 1916
Andy Warhol
Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, 1964
Jackson Pollock
Number 7A, 1948, 1948
Pablo Picasso
Les Femmes d'Alger, Version O, 1955
Amedeo Modigliani
Nu couché, 1917 to 1918
Francis Bacon
Three Studies of Lucian Freud, 1969
Alberto Giacometti
L'Homme au doigt, 1947
Jean Michel Basquiat
Untitled, 1982
Jeff Koons
Rabbit, 1986
David Hockney
Portrait of an Artist, 1972
Mark Rothko
Orange, Red, Yellow, 1961
Three of the top four were set or reset between November 2025 and May 2026. This table carries its date for that reason, and any figure quoted to you in correspondence carries its source.
The market, measured
AB / SCALE
Global art market, 2025
$59.6 B
Total sales, a rise of 4 per cent on the year.
Art Basel & UBS, 2026United States
44 %
Share of global sales by value, the largest single market.
Art Basel & UBS, 2026Dealers
$34.8 B
Sold privately through dealers, against $20.7 B at public auction.
Art Basel & UBS, 2026Online
15 %
Share of the market transacted online, settling back toward the room.
Art Basel & UBS, 2026More art is sold privately than at auction, by a wide margin. That is the shape of the market this house was built for.
The movements
AB / SCHOOLS
Renaissance
A revival of classical proportion, naturalism and humanism. Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Botticelli, Titian
Baroque
Drama, movement and deep contrast of light against dark. Caravaggio, Rubens, Rembrandt, Bernini, Velázquez
Romanticism
Emotion, imagination and the sublime placed above reason. Goya, Delacroix, Turner, Friedrich, Géricault
Impressionism
Fleeting light and colour caught in visible, rapid brushwork. Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, Morisot
Post Impressionism
Structure, symbol and feeling carried further than observation. Van Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin, Seurat, Toulouse Lautrec
Cubism
Form broken into planes and shown from several viewpoints at once. Picasso, Braque, Gris, Léger
Surrealism
The unconscious and the dream, following Freud into paint. Dalí, Magritte, Ernst, Miró, Carrington
Abstract Expressionism
Gesture and colour field at a scale that surrounds the viewer. Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, Newman, Krasner
Pop Art
Mass media and consumer imagery taken as subject. Warhol, Lichtenstein, Hamilton, Oldenburg, Hockney
Minimalism
Essential geometry and industrial material, gesture removed. Judd, Flavin, Agnes Martin, LeWitt, Andre
Neo Expressionism
A return to raw, emotionally charged figurative painting. Basquiat, Schnabel, Kiefer, Baselitz
Dansaekhwa
Korean monochrome painting built by repetition and process. Park Seo Bo, Lee Ufan, Ha Chong Hyun, Yun Hyong keun
Ukiyo e
Woodblock prints of the floating world: actors, courtesans, landscape. Hokusai, Hiroshige, Utamaro
Literati painting
Scholar painting prizing expressive brush over technical likeness. The scholar official tradition of China
Persian miniature
Manuscript painting of courtly and literary narrative in flattened space. Timurid and Safavid workshops
Papunya Tula
The acrylic painting movement that carried Dreaming narrative onto board. Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Emily Kame Kngwarreye
For the Indian schools, from the Progressive Artists' Group to Neo Tantra, see The Masters and Expertise.
Enquiries
Looking for a particular hand
Tell us the artist, the period and the budget. Where we can find the right work we will, and where the market for that name is currently badly priced we will tell you that instead.
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