Anna Weyant’s Josephine, who sold more than $ 500,000 at a Sotheby’s auction in Hong Kong Sotheby’s
The story of the painter Anna Weyant sounds like a fairy tale of modern art and, in the pens of some journalists, reads like one. Just five years after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design, his paintings are already selling for more than a million dollars at auction, sometimes at several times the estimated price.
Weyant’s paintings, with their dark nuances and outstanding luster of opulence, depict both raw and everyday scenes of young women managing the joys and indignities of adolescence. According to Alex Greenberger of ARTnews, his influences range from old Dutch masters of the 17th century to more contemporary artists such as John Currin.
“Imagine Botticelli as a millennial, whose porcelain skin beauties also have a high leg like Victoria Beckham’s meme or sporty gold necklaces that say, ‘Ride or Die,'” writes Kelly Crow of Wall Street Journal.
In May, Weyant became the youngest artist currently represented by the famous Gagosian Gallery, according to Alex Greenberger of ARTnews. (He is also dating the gallery’s founder, Larry Gagosian, and his relationship has been the subject of gossip in the art world.) American cities and has received the best placement in Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips, according to Helen Holmes of the Daily Beast.
“I first discovered Anna Weyant last summer,” Lucius Elliott, head of Sotheby’s Now Evening auction, told the Daily Beast. “Obviously there was a lot of hunger in the market for the works. It was very difficult to access at the primary level; the show was sold out “.
But art critics like Jerry Saltz, who first posted some of Weyant’s pieces on his Instagram in 2019, are concerned about the speed of his rise, given the volatile whims of the art world.
“The art world loves to devour its young people,” Saltz told the Wall Street Journal. “It can be hard to paint with another voice in your head whispering numbers and prices, but maybe you can.”
Anna Weyant’s Falling Woman, which sold for $ 1.6 million, a record for the artist, in May 2022 at Sotheby’s Now Evening Sotheby’s auction
Weyant did not aspire all her life to be a world-renowned artist; it just happened. He grew up in Calgary, Canada, but wanted to be in New York. She enrolled in the Rhode Island School of Design because it was the closest school to the city that accepted her, according to the Wall Street Journal. In the summer after his freshman year, he competed with the National Gallery of Canada, where he placed in the top three. The following year, he painted young women and girls.
“Being new, confused, and nostalgic in a new country was just scary,” Weyant told the Wall Street Journal. “I remember thinking that if I could convey my fears to the woman I was painting, I would at least have someone else in the conversation with me.”
At first, Weyant’s paintings found fame on Instagram, where critics like Saltz pushed his work to an even larger audience. Through some timely connections, he made his first solo exhibition at the 56 Henry Gallery in New York in 2019. Each piece in the show sold for $ 2,000 to $ 12,000, a fraction of what they could make now.
Looking to the future, Weant is gearing up for an upcoming solo exhibition at the Gagosian this fall. His style is changing, the Wall Street Journal writes, and his subjects now “occupy larger canvases and wear ruby lips and ponytails.” He is watching Lifetime movies for research. Meanwhile, the art world remains engrossed, watching it.
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