Yoshitomo Nara

Do you own a piece by Yoshitomo Nara and would you like to know more about the work and its value? Our Experts will carry out a free appraisal of your painting, provide you with an estimate of the market price, and help you to sell it at the best price.

Status, price and estimation by artist Yoshitomo Nara

Price of a painting: 7,600 – 3,200,000 €.

Estimated value of a drawing: 7,900 – 1,100,000 €.

Estimation of a print: 330 – 20,700€.

Estimation of a sculpture: 100 – 1,000,000€.

Estimate of an object: 120 – 3,100€.

Estimate of a photograph: 440 – 9 800€.

If you would like to have a Yoshitomo Nara’s work appraised, our experts will take care of everything.

Nara’s youth

Nara is a Japanese painter and sculptor born in 1959. He has lived and worked in Tokyo and since 1984 has had more than forty solo exhibitions in the world’s most prestigious museums, such as MoMA and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. The artist is a graduate of Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music. He also studied from 1988 to 1993 at the Kunstakademie in Dusseldorf, Germany.

An intriguing and fascinating work with multiple influences.

Nara really made a name for herself on the international contemporary scene during the Japanese pop art movement of the 1990s. Most of his work depicts children and animals that look soft and vulnerable, but often hide weapons, such as knives. The look of his creations is often accusatory, eyes half closed, like waking up from a nap or out of hatred for something. However, Nara does not consider his childlike characters as aggressors, their weapons being too small to really hurt. Nara’s work, as strange as it is intriguing, has generated a worldwide cult. His paintings regularly sell for several million euros and many commercial products have been derived from his work.

In 2010, the artist organised his first major New York exhibition thanks to the Asia Society.

Nara maintains that he never claimed that he was influenced by manga. However, he subverts his imagination by incorporating horrific influences into it. This mixture of representations of innocent children mixed with the malevolence of men could be a reaction to the extremely rigid Japanese conventions. Punk music also influenced his work.

Nara grew up at a time when pop culture and Western capitalism flooded his imagination, notably through comic books, Walt Disney and Warner Bros.

New creation process

In 2017, the artist exhibited his work at the Pallace Galery in New York. Entitled Thinker, the exhibition aims to approach the notion of the body in a more meditative way. Indeed, the artist stated that he previously had an image in his head that he was trying to put into shape. From this point on, he analyses profoundly and extends over all the stages of creation in order to arrive at an ideal of design.

In 2017, the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art organised a retrospective of his career: For better or worse.

Appraise and sell a painting by Yoshitomo Nara

If you own a Yoshitomo Nara painting or any other sculpture, ask for a free estimate via our online form.

You will then be contacted by a member of our team of experts and auctioneers to give you an independent view of the market price of your painting. In the event of a sale, our specialists will also advise you on the various options available to sell your work at the best price.