Lucas Arruda
Growth#13
Egon Investment Scores
Liquidity
6/10
How easily works can be bought and sold at auction
Institutional
9/10
Museum collections, biennials, and institutional recognition
Momentum
8/10
Recent price trends, gallery moves, and market buzz
Discovery
2/10
Undervaluation opportunity relative to peer artists
Risk
1/10
Investment risk factors — higher means more volatile
Market Position
- Auction History
- Date
- 2020
- Work
- Untitled
- Price USD
- $487,663
- Auction House
- Phillips Hong Kong
- Market Trends
- Market Segment
- Upper-tier emerging/established contemporary painter with strong institutional backing and blue-chip gallery representation
- Demand Indicators
- Increasing institutional validation with 2025 Musée d'Orsay exhibition. Work regularly sells at auction. Featured at Art Basel and major international fairs through David Zwirner and Mendes Wood DM.
- Price Development
- Steady upward trajectory since 2018 David Zwirner representation. Record set at $487,663 in 2020 has not been surpassed publicly, suggesting price consolidation at current levels.
- Market Performance
- Liquidity
- Moderate - 8-15 lots annually at major auctions. Strong gallery representation provides primary market liquidity.
- Collector Base
- International collectors including prestigious names like Mo Ostin Collection. Strong presence in both Brazilian and international markets (USA, Europe, Asia).
- Primary Market
- Represented by David Zwirner and Mendes Wood DM - primary market prices available on request through galleries
- Price Range USD
- 8,573 - 487,663
- Market Trajectory
- Work has sold for six figures on secondary market. Consistent auction presence from 2010-2025 with increasing institutional and collector interest. Regular appearance at major auction houses (Sotheby's, Christie's, Phillips, Bonhams).
- Total Auction Lots Recorded
- 55+ (per Artnet), 47+ (per Artsy), 42+ (per AskART)
- Recent Auction Results 2023 2025
Work Date Result Venue Size Untitled (2013) May 15, 2025 Sold - price not disclosed Sotheby's 50.2 x 60.3 cm Untitled (from the series Deserto-Modelo) (2013) January 18, 2025 Sold - price not disclosed Sotheby's 50 x 50 cm Untitled (2011) November 22, 2024 Sold - price not disclosed Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale 70 x 90 cm Sem Titulo (2011) October 1, 2024 Sold - price not disclosed Christie's Post-War to Present 70 x 90 cm Sem título (2010) September 27, 2024 Sold - price not disclosed Sotheby's oil and wax on paper, 22.5 x 30.5 cm Untitled XXII (2011) May 14, 2024 Sold - price not disclosed Sotheby's 7 1/8 x 9 1/2 in. (18.1 x 24 cm) Sans titre (from the Deserto-Modelo series) November 30, 2022 Sold - price not disclosed Christie's 50.5 x 60.5 cm Untitled (2015) - The Mo Ostin Collection May 19, 2023 Sold - prestigious provenance Sotheby's 9.5 x 12 in. (24.1 x 30.5 cm)
Institutional Presence
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Tate, United Kingdom
Centre Pompidou, Paris
Museum of Modern Art (referenced by Moragari)
Fondation Beyeler, Basel
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Art Institute of Chicago
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo
Museu de arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP)
Rubell Museum, Miami
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Moderna Museet, Stockholm
Pérez Art Museum, Miami
Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Museo Jumex, Mexico City
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, New York
Kunstmuseum Den Haag, The Hague
Long Museum, Shanghai
M Woods Museum, Beijing
X Museum, Beijing
Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai
Cornell Fine Arts Museum
Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin
TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Madrid
K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong
Pinault Collection, Paris
Boros Collection, Berlin
- Exhibitions
- Major Solo Exhibitions
Title Year Venue Significance Lucas Arruda: Qu'importe le paysage 2025 Musée d'Orsay, Paris First Southern Hemisphere artist featured in contemporary project at Musée d'Orsay, shown in Impressionist Gallery alongside Monet, Courbet, and other masters Deserto-Modelo 2025 Carré d'Art-Musée d'art contemporain, Nîmes Major institutional solo in France Site-specific presentation 2024 Daitoku-ji Ōbai-in Temple, Kyoto Zen Buddhist temple commission Assum Preto 2024 David Zwirner, New York Fourth solo with gallery Assum Preto 2023 Ateneo de Madrid — Assum Preto 2022 David Zwirner, Paris — Lugar sem Lugar 2021-2022 Fundação Iberê Camargo, Porto Alegre / Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo Major Brazilian institutional tour Pond Society 2020 New Century Art Foundation, Shanghai — Deserto-Modelo 2019 David Zwirner, New York First New York solo Deserto-Modelo 2019 Fridericianum, Kassel First large-scale institutional solo exhibition Solo exhibition 2018 Cahiers d'Art, Paris With accompanying monograph Solo exhibition 2017 David Zwirner, London First solo in London - Major Group Exhibitions
Title Year Venue Type 1000º - 38th Panorama da Arte Brasileira 2024 Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo Biennial Natureculture 2021 Fondation Beyeler, Basel — Luogo e Segni 2019 Punta della Dogana, Venice — Nature and Abstraction 2018 Fondation Beyeler, Basel — New Shamans/Novos Xamãs: Brazilian Artists 2016 Rubell Family Collection, Miami — 1st International Biennial of Asunción: Cry of Liberty 2015 Asunción, Paraguay Biennial La Bienal 2013: Here Is Where We Jump! 2013-2014 Museo del Barrio, New York Biennial
- Museum Collections
- Notes
- Exceptional institutional presence for an artist born in 1983. Tier 1 museum collections (Guggenheim, Tate, MoMA, Centre Pompidou, Getty) combined with prestigious solo exhibitions at major European institutions. The 2025 Musée d'Orsay exhibition is particularly significant.
- Awards and Recognition
- Featured in Phaidon's Vitamin P3: New Perspectives in Painting (2019)
- Included in first edition of Magma magazine edited by Paul Olivennes
- François Pinault Collection artist residency, Lens, France (2017-2018)
- Three major monographs: Cahiers d'Art (2018), David Zwirner Books (2020), Fridericianum/Walther König (2022)
Career & Biography
- Career
- Represented by David Zwirner since 2018 (major Tier 1 gallery)
- Co-represented by Mendes Wood DM (primary Brazilian gallery since 2009)
- 2025: Solo exhibition at Musée d'Orsay Paris - first Southern Hemisphere artist in a contemporary project at the institution
- 2025: Solo exhibition at Carré d'Art-Musée d'art contemporain, Nîmes
- 2024: Site-specific presentation at Daitoku-ji Ōbai-in Temple, Kyoto
- 2023: Solo exhibition curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist at Ateneo de Madrid
- 2022: Solo exhibition traveled from Fundação Iberê Camargo to Instituto Tomie Ohtake
- 2019: First large-scale institutional solo show at Fridericianum, Kassel
- 2018: First monograph published by Éditions Cahiers d'Art, Paris
- 2020: Comprehensive monograph published by David Zwirner Books
- Participated in François Pinault's prestigious artist residency in Lens, France (2017-2018)
- Included in Phaidon's Vitamin P3 (2019) highlighting groundbreaking contemporary painters
- Identity
- Studio Practice
- Works in small formats, painting at the break of day. Uses both additive and reductive processes: creates horizon lines by removing paint with the back of a brush; for monochromes, applies layer upon layer of pigment to pre-dyed raw canvas over weeks or months to match the canvas's original tinted hue.
- Current Location
- São Paulo, Brazil
- Artistic Background
- Part of a generation in Brazil that reclaimed painting around 2005 in an art scene then largely dominated by conceptual art. Began painting daily since childhood as a hyperactive child enrolled in art school by his parents. By the time he reached college, he was already committed to painting, which was unusual in that context.
- Artistic Context
- J.M.W. Turner's late work, Venezuelan artist Armando Reverón, Giorgio Morandi, Brazilian modernists José Pancetti, Alfredo Volpi, and Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato. Literary influences from Brazilian poet João Cabral de Melo Neto and Dino Buzzati's novel O Deserto dos Tártaros. Creates intricate, meditative compositions that blur boundaries between mnemonic and imaginative registers. States: 'The only reason to call my works landscapes is cultural—it's simply that viewers automatically register my format as a landscape, although none of the images can be traced to a geographic location. It's the idea of landscape as a structure, rather than a real place.' Paints from memory, not observation, exploring light as both subject and structure.
Artistic Profile
- Style
- Ever-present but sometimes faint horizon line providing structural anchor. Emphasis on atmospheric conditions. Gas-like, ephemeral surfaces. Balance between nebulous and solid, psychic and material. Paradoxically monumental despite small scale.
- Influences
- Influences and Lineage
- Literary
- João Cabral de Melo Neto (Brazilian poet, source of Deserto-Modelo concept)Dino Buzzati (O Deserto dos Tártaros)Édouard Glissant (French poet and post-colonial philosopher)
- Historical
- J.M.W. Turner (late work)Claude Lorrain (light effects)John Constable (atmospheric conditions)Caspar David Friedrich (Romantic sublime)Giorgio Morandi (repetitive structures, metaphysical impulse)Armando Reverón (Venezuelan landscape, light)James Abbott Whistler (tonality)Agnes Martin (serial practice)
- Brazilian Modernists
- José Pancetti (1902-1958)Alfredo Volpi (1896-1988)Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato (1900-1995)Miguel Bakun
- Visual Language
- Muted, subtly shifting palettes. Grays, blues, ochres, earth tones. Emphasis on tonal gradation rather than chromatic intensity. Light as emergent quality rather than applied color.
- Themes and Subjects
- Landscape as mental structure rather than geographic placeLight as both subject and material investigationMemory and its reconstruction through paintingTension between abstraction and figurationSublime and metaphysical dimensions of natureTime and atmospheric conditions at margins of day (dawn, twilight)Emptiness, absence, and existential spaceBrazilian identity through modernist painting tradition
- Movements and Periods
- Signature Series
- Dates
- 2010-ongoing
- Title
- Deserto-Modelo
- Description
- Title borrowed from Brazilian poet João Cabral de Melo Neto, meaning 'models of desert'—imaginary, atemporal places that cannot be grasped through language. Encompasses seascapes, jungle images, and abstract monochrome works.
- Significance
- Core body of work, used as title for most solo exhibitions
- Art Historical Positioning
- Positioned at intersection of multiple traditions: 19th-century Romantic landscape, Impressionist light studies, Brazilian modernism, and postwar abstraction. Simultaneously engages and subverts landscape genre by insisting on mental rather than geographic space. Part of generation reclaiming painting as contemporary practice in Brazil around 2005.
- Techniques and Mediums
- Innovations
- Synthesis of additive and reductive techniques within single practice. Translation of ephemeral light effects into material paint through sustained, meditative process. Small format as vehicle for vast atmospheric experience. Memory as primary subject of landscape painting.
Critical Reception
- Critical Reception
- Critical Voices
Contribution Critic Role Essay in David Zwirner Books monograph (2020) Barry Schwabsky — Curated 2023 Ateneo de Madrid exhibition, contributed to 2018 Cahiers d'Art monograph Hans Ulrich Obrist Curator Essay 'The creation of silence' in Cahiers d'Art monograph Chris Sharp — Author of comprehensive text in David Zwirner Books monograph Will Chancellor — — Lilian Tone Curator - Online Discourse
- Strong presence in art media with regular coverage of exhibitions. Active discussion in art market publications and collector communities.
- Critical Consensus
- Widely recognized as significant contemporary painter redefining landscape genre. Critics emphasize meditative quality, sophisticated engagement with light and memory, and ability to bridge abstraction and figuration. Compared to masters like Turner, Morandi, and Reverón while maintaining distinct contemporary voice.
- Publications and Media
- Major Publications
Work Year Significance Authors Publication Vitamin P3: New Perspectives in Painting 2019 Included among groundbreaking artists shaping contemporary painting — Phaidon Press Lucas Arruda: Deserto-Modelo 2020 Comprehensive monograph, 136 pages, 100 color reproductions Will Chancellor, Barry Schwabsky David Zwirner Books Lucas Arruda 2018 First comprehensive monograph Fernanda Brenner, Chris Sharp, Hans Ulrich Obrist Éditions Cahiers d'Art, Paris Lucas Arruda: Deserto-Modelo 2022 Accompanying catalogue to Fridericianum exhibition Moritz Wesseler, Vincenzo de Bellis, Fernanda Brenner, Marlene Bürgi, Lilian Tone, Theodora Vischer Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König Landscape Painting Now 2019 Featured as significant contemporary landscape painter — D.A.P/Distributed Art Publishers — — Featured among notable contemporaries in modern revival of avant-garde aesthetics, with previously unpublished painting accompanying Édouard Glissant poem — Magma (first edition)
Gallery & Representation
- Fair Presence
- Regular participation at major international art fairs through David Zwirner and Mendes Wood DM including Art Basel (multiple editions), Frieze, and other top-tier fairs
- Representation
- Market Positioning
- Dual representation by Tier 1 global gallery (David Zwirner) and strong regional gallery (Mendes Wood DM) provides optimal market positioning. David Zwirner representation since 2018 represents major career elevation.
- Geographic Reach
- Works available through both galleries. Primary market prices available on request. Secondary market works appear regularly at major auction houses.
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