Many people may not realize just how rich the most famous painters are. The richest painters in the world are millionaires and sometimes billionaires, thanks to their twist on art styles and creative use of textures.
Learn about the richest painters in the world and how their boundary-breaking art landed them millions of dollars and a name that will go down in the history books.
Top 20 Richest Painters & Artists
1. John Currin
Net Worth: $1.43 billion
Most Expensive Work: Nice ‘n Easy ($12 million)
John Currin is currently the richest painter in the world, with an estimated worth of a whopping $1.4 billion thanks to his unique and sought-after painting style.
His works have an eerie, surreal aura that people liken to Salvador Dali mixed with Margaret Keene. His paintings have a realistic style mixed with warped dimensions, especially surrounding the human body.
These paintings tend to draw people in and perplex viewers, but they also can’t look away. Currin’s ability to create these curious works that come from a unique mind is the reason for his immense success and fat net worth.
2. Ed Ruscha
Net Worth: $1.2 Billion
Most Expensive Work: Hurting the Word Radio #2 ($52.5 Million)
Ed Ruscha had a modest upbringing in America's heartland. He was born in Omaha, Nebraska but spend most of his early life in Oklahoma. Ruscha would eventually move to LA where he would study art at the Chouinard Art Institute.
Ruscha's works were influenced by the Pop Art movement of the 1960s and mostly feature text, words, and phrases. While Ruscha gained notoriety for his word images, he was no one-trick-pony. Ruscha experimented with photography and film in addition to his oil paintings.
Ruscha was never afraid to experiment, often using food products and other odd materials to portray his work.
3. Gerhard Richter
$830 million
Most Expensive Work: Abstraktes Bild ($214.6 million)
Gerhard Richter is the third richest painter in the world, with just more than half of Curirn’s current net worth. His works resemble Jackson Pollock, with a very abstract design that features many colors and shapes.
The works are bold, with dark and rich colors like scarlet reds and Norwegian blues that tend to grab people’s attention, even among a sea of other artists. Some feature mustard yellow colors with symmetrical patterns, while others have a more chaotic vibe, evoking strong emotions.
4. Jeff Koons
Net Worth: $500 Million
Most Expensive Work: Rabbit ($91 million)
Many people will be familiar with the name Jeff Koons, even if you aren’t up to date on the art world’s top people.
Koons is known for creating statues that look like real balloons or balloon animals, mixing textures in a surprising and new way. He is best known for his sculptures, but he also uses paint as one of his mediums. His most famous of those works is Balloon Dog.
His paintings have a Salvador Dali vibe of surrealism and a dream-like scene. But he uses bright and bold colors that remind many of Andy Warhol’s pop art. His contemporary art is striking and sometimes confusing, drawing in the viewer to ask more questions and ponder the images.
5. Damien Hirst
Net Worth: $384 million
Most Expensive Work: Lullaby Spring ($19.2 million)
Damien Hirst makes colorful, abstract paintings that often take elements from nature, combining the natural with the unnatural.
He often uses cherry blossom trees as inspiration for his work and polka dots brilliantly for strong but simple paintings that provoke feelings of happiness and humbleness.
People love his paintings because they have a positive yet complex aura that makes you feel warm and welcome without knowing exactly why. His work is all about controlled chaos, combining many colors and energy in a way that feels organized and deliberately composed.
6. David Choe
$300 million
Most Expensive Work: Untitled ($200 Million – awarded in Facebook stock)
David Choe’s work is vivid and busy, allowing you to see a new aspect every time you look at it.
They are often portraits, sometimes of famous people like Anthony Bourdain. But they always feature varying colors than the real ones with elements of graffiti and pop art, combining traditional portraits with street art.
He depicts people realistically with a twist, such as undefined brush strokes or overlapping designs that look almost like a mask. His paintings aim to display emotion and the world’s chaos and how that materializes within the individual.
While his most expensive painting was only a few thousand, most of his money comes from his stock in Facebook, not Meta, which was his payment for some commissioned work by Sean Parker.
7. Jasper Johns
Net Worth: $300 million
Most Expensive Work: Flag 1983 ($36 million)
People often compare American artist Jasper Johns to Andy Warhol due to his use of common imagery and symbols like the American flag, numbers, and letters. This type of modern art often evokes feelings relating to current events, but they tend to have lasting power as the state of the world and people’s lives shift and progress.
He also combines small lines to make massive patterns that can be bold and beautiful from a distance and then intricate and peaceful up close. Overall, his painting typically has a powerful yet relaxed vibe that many people appreciate in their homes.
8 Andrew Vicari
Net Worth: $210 Million
The south changing room of Wales' Millennium Stadium was said to be cursed, and every team based there would lose.
So Welsh artist Andrew Vicari painted a mural of the sun, a horse and a phoenix to defeat the “bad spirits”, which worked – the jinx was lifted.#FolkloreThursday pic.twitter.com/jHyBHco1rk— Mark Rees (@reviewwales) May 17, 2018
Most Expensive Work: First Gulf War collection (£17 million)
Andrew Vicari was born in Whales but spent most of his adult life in France. Vicari was well known for his portraits of famous people. He referred to himself as the “painter of kings” because of his love for painting royalty and world leaders.
Late in his life, Vicari sold a collection of 125 paintings from the 1st Gulf War to Prince Khaled for £17 million.
Andrew Vicari certainly amassed a fortune in his lifetime but it is rumored that he filed for bankruptcy and may have lost his fortune.
9. Anish Kapoor
Net Worth: $182 million
Most Expensive Work: Cloud Gate ($23 Million)
Anish Kapoor’s work can seem violent and threatening, as he mainly uses blood red and black to create chaotic and deliberate works of art that evoke strong emotions. Many people also see sexual tones within his work that sometimes resemble female genitalia.
He also departs from the typical flat canvas, using crazy textures and warped canvases that bring each painting to life. People often have visceral reactions to the paintings that can be aggressive and alarming but also beautiful and complex at the same time.
10. David Hockney
Net Worth: $150 million
Most Expensive Work: Portrait of an Artist ($90.3 million)
David Hockney is one of the most famous modern painters, as his expensive paintings have set records at auctions and found their way into pop culture. He focuses on self-reflection and the relationship between the adult and the inner child, and how those two intertwine to make an artist or person.
His paintings are colorful and soft, often depicting people doing normal activities that represent humanity. People dancing in a circle, someone swimming in a pool, and other simple actions take on new meaning and depth when Hockney includes them in his powerful artwork.
11 Takashi Murakami
Net Worth: $100 Million
Most Expensive Work: My Lonesome Cowboy ($15.2 Million)
The unique Japanese contemporary artist has enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame. The reason for his rise in popularity is likely due to his collaborations with popular brands, celebrities, and musicians. In 2008, Marakami was named to Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People on Earth list.
Murakami is one of the first contemporary artists to combine Japanese culture with commercial art. He has worked to design products for popular brands like Off-White and Louis Vuitton. His collaborations with famous artists include Pharrell Williams, Kanye West, and Justin Bieber.
Takashi Murakami will likely see his name rise on the list of the richest painters.
12. Bridget Riley
Net Worth: $85 million
Most Expensive Work: Chant 2 ($5 million)
As the one of the only women on this list, a lot of credit must be given to Bridget Riley for being one of the richest painters in the world. Her paintings are often a play on optical illusions and have a sort of 50s retro feeling that is powerful and striking.
Her paintings always have defined lines and shapes, taking abstract to a controlled and precise place, rather than chaos. She uses digital art and paints as her main mediums, combining the two to create intricate patterns that mix with the softness of real paint. It’s hard not to be mesmerized but her works as they demand your attention.
13. Banksy
Net Worth: $50 million
Most Expensive Work: Love is in the Bin ($25.4 million)
You’ve probably heard of Banksy. He’s a famous street artist from the United Kingdom known for tagging public spaces with powerful and provocative art that always has a political message behind it.
He also tends to be a bit of a rebel as he doesn’t play by the normal rules of the art world. One of the most dramatic points of his career was when Girl with Balloon was shredded the moment it was sold at auction for millions of dollars.
Banksy is anonymous, meaning he doesn’t make public appearances, and no one knows who he is. So people can only guess at his net worth, and $50 million is likely only a portion of what he has accrued through his art.
14. Antony Gormley
Net Worth: $50 Million
Most Expensive Work: Angel of the North ($3.4 Million)
Antony Gormley is a highly respected British sculptor whose famous works include: Angel of the North, Another Place, Time Horizon, and Event Horizon. The English artist's style has a wide range but he has become known for erecting larger than life sculptures that interact with beautiful nature sites around the world.
in 1994, Gormley was awarded the Turner Prize for his work on Field for the British Isles.
15. Beeple
Beeple sold an NFT for $69 million https://t.co/p2hRKdqhtI via @Verge
— Ophelia Hill (@Ophelia36390636) July 5, 2022
Net Worth: $50 Million
Most Expensive Work: Everydays: The First 500 Days ($69 Million)
Beeple exploded onto the art scene when his digital mosaic NFT sold for just shy of $70 million at a Christie's Auction. Prior to the sale, Beeple had remained relatively unknown to the broader art community.
The digital artwork brought into the spotlight NFT's (non fungible tokens). The $69 million dollar sale led a furious asset bubble in NFT's and other digital assets.
Much of Beeple's $50 Million net worth comes from his historic NFT sale.
16 Cindy Sherman
Net Worth: $35 Million
Most Expensive Work: Untitled #96 ($3.8 Million)
Cindy Sherman is an American filmmaker and photographer. Like many artists, she spent a good part of her career unknown to many and hustling to gain notoriety, selling her photos for nominal amounts of money. In 2011, her self portrait Untitled #96 became the most expensive photograph ever sold at auction when it fetched $3.89 Million at a Christie's auction.
The record price was surpassed by Andrea Gursky's Rhein II and now sits at #4 on the list of most expensive photographs ever sold. Outside of Untitled #96, Sherman has still enjoyed an extremely successful career and has been an influential figure in the American photography scene.
17 Richard Prince
Net Worth: $30 Million
Most Expensive Work: Runaway Nurse ($9.6 Million)
Prince's most expensive work may be Runaway Nurse but his most notable is from his Unititled (Cowboy) series, a photograph of a photograph. The famous work is an appropration of a Marlboro advertisement from a depiction of the Marlboro Man.
Prince's Nurse Paintings were inspired by the covers of romance novels usually found on the racks at magazine stands. 10 such paintings sold for more than $4 Million in recent auctions. Prince has been a controversial figure in the art community because of his appropriation work which some say borders on stealing of intellectual property.
18. Chuck Close
Net Worth: $25 Million
Most Expensive Work: John ($4.8 Million)
Chuck Close did not have an easy life and his hardships influenced his artwork in a major way. At the age of 48, Close suffered a seizure while attending a ceremony in New York City that left him paralyzed from the waist down. Even after that, Close continued to produce inspiring portraits that were characterized as a photorealistic style.
Close enjoyed painting portraits of like minded artists. He produced a portrait of fellow artist, Cindy Sherman, called Cindy II. The work sold for $1.2 Million.
19. Georg Baselitz
Net Worth: $20 Million
Most Expensive Work: Dresdner Frauen (Women of Dresden – $11.2 Million)
German visual artist painter, Georg Baselitz is most famous as the painter who paints upside down. Having been born in Baselitz, Germany in 1938, Georg's artistic style was influenced by the circumstances surrounding his upbringing in World War II era Nazi Germany.
Baselitz changed his name later in life as a tribute to his hometown.
While Baselitz was best known as a painter, his most expensive work is an almost 5 foot tall sculpture made of ash wood.
20 Julie Mehretu
Net Worth: $10 Million
Most Expensive Work: Mumbo Jumbo ($5 Million)
Julie Mehretu was born in Ethiopia before her family moved to Michigan at a young age. Mehretu attended art school at the Rhode Island School of Design where she developed her technical style.
Mehretu's abstract depictions of urban life have been lauded for their breathtakingly interesting visuals.
Conclusion
The richest painters in the world utilize creative ideas and beautiful mediums that impress people enough that they spend millions of dollars to own them.
While most people can’t afford to drop close to $100 million on a painting, a wealthy art collector wouldn't think twice about bidding on pieces by artists like these at auction. These artists on this list have shed the starving artist trope and become some of the richest people on the planet.
