‘POLKA DOTS QUEEN’ YAYOI KUSAMA, 96, OF JAPAN BECOMES FIRST EVER WOMAN TO TOP THE HURUN GLOBAL ART LIST WITH SALES OF HER WORKS AT PUBLIC AUCTION REACHING US$159MN

UK ARTIST DAVID HOCKNEY, 88, 2^ND WITH US$153MN, UP 60%

AMERICAN POP ARTIST ED RUSCHA, 88, 3^RD WITH US$130MN, UP 19%

USA LED WITH 15 ARTISTS, FOLLOWED BY UK WITH 10 AND CHINA WITH 9. ‘BIG 3’ COUNTRIES MAKE UP 70% OF LIST

TOTAL SALES OF THE WORKS OF HURUN GLOBAL ART LIST DOWN 32% TO JUST US$1.1BN. 32 ARTISTS SAW THE SALES OF THEIR WORKS DOWN, OF WHICH 12 DROPPED OFF THE HURUN LIST COMPLETELY. 

3 ARTISTS, DOWN 1, SAW THEIR WORKS SOLD AT PUBLIC AUCTION FOR MORE THAN US$100MN

ONLY 18 ARTISTS SAW THEIR SALES RISE, OF WHICH 12 WERE NEW FACES.

OF THE 12 NEW FACES, 3 WERE FROM THE UK, 2 FROM EACH OF USA AND GERMANY, THE OTHER 5 FROM CHINA, SPAIN, ITALY, PHILIPPINES AND SOUTH KOREA  

AVERAGE AGE WAS 68 YEARS OLD, 1 OLDER THAN LAST YEAR. 9 ARTISTS WERE 50 YEARS OR UNDER, 2 LESS THAN LAST YEAR

10 WOMEN ARTISTS MADE THE HURUN LIST, ONE MORE THAN LAST YEAR

LEADING AUTHORITY ON GLOBAL WEALTH RELEASES HURUN GLOBAL ART LIST 2025

(23 December 2025, Shanghai) The Hurun Research Institute today launched the Hurun Global Art List 2025, a ranking of the Top 50 artists in the world alive today, based on the sales of their works at public auction in the year ending 31 December 2024. This is the sixth year of the Hurun Global Art List.

Artprice.com provided the art auction data for non-China, whilst China data was from Chongqing Culture Art Industry Association, Artprice and Artron. The appendices contain the full Hurun Global Art List, together with the Hurun China Art List 2025 and Hurun India Art List 2025.

Global art auction sales in 2024 were down 34% to US$9.9bn. Due to fluctuations in the economic environment, art market, and reduced supply of fine works, the global market is in a weak state.  The USA, China and the UK accounted for more than 70% of the global art auction market performance, with the USA art market down 27% year-on-year to US$3.8bn, but still No.1 in the world, and China's art market keeped second with US$1.8bn, according to the Artron Art Market Monitoring Center and Artprice's 2024 Art Market Report.

Hurun Chairman and Chief Researcher Rupert Hoogewerf said,

“This is the sixth year of the Hurun Global Art List, a list that we started because we could see the trend of Chinese collectors going global.  It is not just their businesses that are going more and more global, as well as their their families, through their children being educated abroad, and now their taste in art. We hope that the Hurun list can encourage more businesses and entrepreneurs to start collecting.”

“This year, the total turnover of the Top 50 living artists on the Hurun Global Art List is down by a third, the lowest in the six years we have been doing this list. This reflects the slowdown in the world economy, making potential collectors more conservative. Despite this, it is worth noting that the latest data from the Hurun Global Rich List shows that the number of billionaires in the world has never been higher, hitting a record 3400. Of these, half are from the USA and China, which suggests that half the world’s top art should be collected by entrepreneurs from these two countries. Bearing this in mind, the global art market should pick up within the next three years.”

“Yayoi Kusama, Japan's 'Polka Dots Queen’, has broken two records, becoming the first woman and first Asian to top the Hurun Global Art List.” 

“In the past six years, only 100 artists have ever made the Hurun Global Art List. Seven have passed away, including American artist Frank Stella and German artist Frank Auerbach, who passed away in 2024. The Hurun artists are the most successful artists alive today in the world, very much brands in their own right. Gerhard Richter, Yayoi Kusama, David Hockney and Yoshitomo Nara have not left the Hurun Top 10 since our list began six years ago.”

“In terms of countries, artists from the USA, the UK and China account for nearly 70% of the list. Surprisingly perhaps, countries like France, the Netherlands and Italy, countries that are traditonanlly considered to be amongst the best-known for artists, only manage one artist between them on the Hurun list.”

“This year, China has a total of 8 artists on the list, 3 fewer than last year. Among them, the total turnover of the Top 3 China artists was less than half of last year, reflecting the slowdown in the Chinese economy. By comparison, the total transaction volume of the 100 artists on the Hurun China Art List was down 40% compared with last year.”

“In the past six years, a total of 20 China artists have made the Hurun Global Art List, with an average of 10 China artists entering the list every year. Among these China artists, oil painting artists perform particularly well, accounting for 75%, becoming the absolute main force. Among them, 4 artists Liu Ye, Zhou Chunya, Fan Zeng and Zeng Fanzhi have been on the list for six consecutive years.”

“The average age was 68 years old, one year older than last year. Among them, two are aged 35 and under. Five years ago, there were no Under35s or Under40s artists on the list. This year, there are 9 artists aged 50 and under, 2 fewer than last year.”

“Last year, AI's impact on the contemporary art market was a historic event. In November 2024, a painting A.I. God. Portrait of Alan Turing created by AI robot artist Ai-Da was sold at Sotheby's for US$1.1mn. It was the first time in the world that a work from a robot 'artist' was sold for over a million dollars.”

This is a brief English language summary of the full Chinese press release which can be found at www.hurun.net. For media inquiries please contact our public relations team whose contact details can be found at the end of this report.

Who made the Hurun Global Top 10 this year?

Three artists were new to the Top 10: American 70-year-old artist Jeff Koons, American 76-year-old Richard Prince, and UK 60-year-old oil artist Damien Hirst.

In the Top 10, there were 4 artists from the USA, 3 from the UK, 2 from Japan and 1 from Germany.

Table: Hurun Global Art List 2025 – Top 10

Yayoi Kusama, 96, Japan's ‘Queen of the Polka Dots’, topped the list for the first time with sales of her works at public auction across the world hitting US$159mn. Kusama was up one place from last year, although the turnover was down 13%. Kusama became the first female artist to top the Hurun Global Art List. In the past six years, Yayoi Kusama has always been in the Hurun Top 10. When Kusama was ten years old, she was diagnosed with neuropathic audio-visual impairment accompanied by schizophrenia. She often experienced hearing and visual hallucinations. There were countless dots between her and the world in her eyes. From initial panic to gradual acceptance, she tried to draw her hallucinations to heal herself. The illness brought her pain and also gave her a strong desire for expression and creative ability.

British artist David Hockney, 88, was 2^nd with US$153mn, up 60%. Hockney lives in Yorkshire, London and California. Known as the ‘Godfather of British art’, his works make use of two-dimensional pictures to reflect the three-dimensional world, so that the static picture reflects the movement and time.

American pop artist Ed Ruscha, 88, was 3^rd with US$130mn, up 19%. Most of his works associate the paintings with words with the Pop movement, and combine the local language with the urban landscape, with strong colors and great personality.

Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara, 66, was 4^th with US$61.2mn, up 1 place, with sales down 27%. A total of 411 works by Nara were sold last year. Nara's iconic painting of a beautiful, lonely little girl conveys a sentiment that resonates with young people around the world.

German artist Gerhard Richter, 93, ranked 5^th with US$42.3mn. A total of 422 Richter works were sold last year, including his 1988 abstract painting Abstraktes Bild. His works vary in style, including romanticism, photorealism, abstract expressionism, minimalism and pop art.

American artist George Condo, 68, ranked 6^th with US$41.6mn, up 2 places from last year and a 6% decrease in turnover. Condo's signature style was ‘mutant surrealism’, often featuring squeezed cartoon faces and some improvisational hyperbole with Cubism.

American pop artist 70-year-old Jeff Koons returned to the Top 10 with US$29.8mn, ranked 7^th, up 9 places from last year, with a turnover increase of 12%. Koons is an explorer of contemporary pop art, good at creating visual impact with replicas of daily necessities, cartoon characters and a combination of popular images.

Richard Prince, 76, ranked 8^th with US$29.7mn, up 5 places from last year, and his turnover remained the same as last year. Richard Prince extracts material from themes that are close to the American lifestyle, such as Western cowboys, bicycle teams and American celebrities in Marlboro ads.

British female artist Cecily Brown, 56, down 2 places with US$23mn ranked 9^th. Brown explores sexuality in painting from a woman's perspective, and her work offers an insight into the reality around it and is confronted with the psychological and introspective attitude of the human soul through intimate meditation.

British contemporary artist Damien Hirst, 60, was 10^th with US$22.4mn, an increase of 5 places from last year, despite a 22% decline in turnover. Hirst's creative style is known for its boldness, avant-garde and controversy. He constantly challenges the boundaries of art through the themes of life and death, glass case installations, stippling and rotating paintings, and at the same time arouses the audience's deep thinking about existence, death and beauty.

Table: World’s Top Living Artists by Country

The Hurun Top 50 came from 13 countries, the same as last year. Of these, 15 artists live in the USA, 10 in the UK and 8 in China.

Table: Chinese artists on the Hurun Global Art List 2025

Table: Women artists

Table: Youngest artists

Table: Artists Growing Fastest – by Percentage Increase

Table: Top 5 artists on the list with the most works sold

Table: Top 5 artists on the list with the least works sold

Table: 7 artists on the Hurun Global Art List have passed away in the past six years

Table: Historical Data

Hurun Global Art List 2025

Hurun China Art List 2025, Most Successful Chinese Living Artists

Hurun India Art List 2025

About Hurun Inc.

Promoting Entrepreneurship Through Lists and Research

Oxford, Shanghai, Mumbai

Established in the United Kingdom in 1999, Hurun is a research and media group, promoting entrepreneurship through its lists and research. Widely regarded as an opinion-leader in the world of business, Hurun generated 8 billion views on the Hurun brand in 2024, mainly in China and India, and recently expanding to the UK, US, Canada and Australia.

Best-known for the Hurun Rich List series, telling the stories of the world’s successful entrepreneurs in China, India and the world, Hurun’s other key series focus on young businesses and entrepreneurs, through the Hurun Unicorns Index, two Hurun Future Unicorns indices, the Hurun U^th series and the Hurun Pioneers series.

Hurun has grown to become the world’s largest list compiler for start-ups, ranking over 3000 start-ups across the world through its annual Hurun Global Unicorns Index (startups with a valuation of US$1bn+), and two Hurun Future Unicorn Indexes: Gazelles, most likely to ‘go unicorn’ within three years, and Cheetahs, most likely to ‘go unicorn’ within five years.

The Hurun Pioneering Young Startups and Entrepreneurs series focuses on startups set up within the last ten years and founders aged 45 or under.

The Hurun U^th series includes the Under25s, Under30s, Under35s and Under40s awards, representing the cream of each generation of young entrepreneurs who have founded businesses with a social impact and worth US$1m, US$10m, US$50m and US$100m respectively.

Other lists include the Hurun 500 series, ranking the most valuable companies in the world, China and India, the Hurun Global High Schools List, ranking the world’s best independent high schools, the Hurun Philanthropy List, ranking the biggest philanthropists and the Hurun Art List, ranking the world’s most successful artists alive today.

Hurun provides research reports co-branded with some of the world’s leading financial institutions and regional governments.

Hurun hosts high-profile events across China and India, as well as London, Paris, New York, LA, Toronto, Vancouver, Sydney, Luxembourg, Istanbul, Dubai and Singapore.

For further information, see www.hurun.net.

For media inquiries, please contact:

Hurun Report

Porsha Pan

Email: porsha.pan@hurun.net