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The following analysis is conducted in collaboration with ArtTicker, an analytics institute owned by the auction house Phillips, which tracks the media visibility of artists.

For this analysis, ArtTicker examined 5.35 million articles published in 2024.

The percentages indicate the change compared to 2021, the year analyzed in the first report: "How (Well) Recognized is Italian Contemporary Art?"

Media visibility of Italian artists in 2024

In 2024, the global media share of Italian artists—meaning the worldwide media coverage dedicated to Italian artists—rose to 7.83%, ranking them third among all nationalities and first in Europe.

This marks an increase of 12.50% compared to the previous report (published in 2022 and based on 2021 data), where their global share stood at 6.96%.

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The increase was driven by the excellent performance of many Italian artists at the top levels of the ranking, along with the weak performance of leading artists from other nationalities.

Italian artists were the most numerous in the Top 15, but note that we are talking here about all artists, without time limits. In fact, the list includes Michelangelo (5th), Leonardo Da Vinci (7th), Caravaggio (9th), and Maurizio Cattelan (12th).

As we can see, these are historical artists, except in the case of Cattelan, who had his major media moment with the sale of the artwork “Comedian,” the banana taped to the wall.

Among the top 50 Italian artists in 2024, those with the highest percentage increases in media share compared to 2021 were Salvo (+2,351.20%), following his breakthrough on the international market and at auction; Massimo Bartolini (+1,222.98%), the artist who represented Italy at the national pavilion during the 2024 Venice Biennale; Giovanni Anselmo (+902.47%), who had a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim in Bilbao and was included in the group show on Arte Povera at the Bourse de Commerce by Pinault; Claire Fontaine (+849.27%), who provided the title for the international exhibition of the 2024 Venice Biennale, curated by Adriano Pedrosa; and Isabelle Ducrot (+779.61%), who was featured in Dior’s spring fashion show.

Among the Italian artists who experienced significant declines in media presence are Botticelli (-69.32%), who had a media peak in 2021 following the auction record for “Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Roundel,” sold at auction for $92 million, and Modigliani (-46.87%).

Other countries

France (+4.21%) maintained its position, driven by its three most important artists – Monet (+25.08%), Matisse (+20.75%), and Duchamp (+17.13%) – who all increased their media share compared to 2021. Belgium (+61.36%) made great strides thanks to Magritte, who joined the $100 million club and became the top-selling artist at auction in 2024. South Korea (+102.53%) recorded the highest percentage increase in media visibility.

China (-26.35%) had a difficult year, with Ai Weiwei (-19.10%), Qi Baishi (-45.31%), and many of their other leading artists in sharp decline. The United Kingdom (-23.90%) was especially affected by the drop of its most prominent names: Banksy (-6.13%), David Hockney (-34.69%), Damien Hirst (-39.06%), and Lucian Freud (-15.62%). Dutch artists (-30.08%) also underwent a major decrease, with their three major figures – Van Gogh (-17.90%), Rembrandt (-23.48%), and Vermeer (-65.13%) – all in decline. Pablo Picasso (-12.86%) was once again the highest-scoring artist of the year, but lost part of his momentum compared to 2021, contributing to the overall decline of Spain (-9.23%).

Artists born after 1960

If we look only at Italian artists born after 1960, their share of global media reached 3.97% in 2024, placing them sixth among all nationalities. This represents an increase of 112.3% compared to the first report in 2021, when their global media share was 1.87%.

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The duo Claire Fontaine reached the highest position for an Italian artist, ranking 20th thanks to the aforementioned visibility provided by the Venice Biennale. The only other Italian artist in the Top 100 was Francesco Vezzoli, who placed 74th thanks to his exhibition at the Museo Correr, also during the Venice Biennale. However, it must be said that the overall representation remained relatively solid, with 23 Italian artists in the Top 500 and 61 in the Top 1000.

We were saying that the Italian artists present at the Venice Biennale received significantly greater media visibility compared to previous editions, driven by the leading role of Claire Fontaine in "Foreigners Everywhere". Massimo Bartolini also recorded a notable increase as the artist representing the Italian Pavilion. Agnes Questionmark received extraordinary media coverage for her installation "Cyber-Teratology Operation" in the main exhibition. Italian artists with concurrent exhibitions in Venice also received great attention, particularly Francesco Vezzoli at the Museo Correr and Guglielmo Castelli at Palazzetto Tito.

It is interesting to note that in many past editions, the Venice Biennale did not particularly benefit contemporary Italian artists, at least in terms of media visibility. However, the 2022 edition marked a sort of turning point, with Gian Maria Tosatti becoming the first artist to exhibit alone in the entire Italian Pavilion – thus allowing media coverage to focus more on the artist than on the exhibition itself or on a group of artists.

On the other hand, the artist who recorded the highest media peak at the last Biennale was Archie Moore, whose victory of the Golden Lion for Best National Pavilion even overshadowed the visibility of Claire Fontaine. As a result, Australia’s media share (+54.88%) recorded a significant increase.

However, even without winning one of the Golden Lions – which tend to attract the majority of media attention – Claire Fontaine represented a true breakthrough for Italian artists this year.

Beyond Venice, Chiara Camoni, fourth in the ranking of Italian artists, received important recognition in terms of visibility for her exhibition at the Pirelli Hangar Bicocca in Milan. The emerging artist Silvia Rosi gained notable visibility for her exhibition at the Collezione Maramotti, while Giulia Cenci recorded a significant increase in attention thanks to her work abroad, with the installation “Secondary Forest” on the High Line in New York.

Elsewhere

Compared to the 2021 data, published in the 2022 report, sub-Saharan African countries such as Ghana (-33.07%), South Africa (-18.02%), and Nigeria (-35.57%) suffered a marked decline in their global media visibility. On the contrary, South Korea recorded a significant growth (+138.06%), driven in part by the debut of Frieze Seoul in 2022 and the growing international success of artists such as Mire Lee, Haegue Yang, and Do Ho Suh.

France (+54.88%) experienced a particularly positive year thanks to the Venice Biennale with Pierre Huyghe and Julien Creuzet, the Paris Olympics with Mathieu Lehanneur who designed the Olympic torch, and the reopening of Notre-Dame with Claire Tabouret, chosen to create the new stained-glass windows.

The United Kingdom (-15.92%), home of the two most highly valued artists Banksy and Damien Hirst, particularly suffered from the fluctuations – especially due to the 36.5% drop in Hirst’s media visibility since 2021. The United States (-10.10%) contained the losses, but to understand the extent of the phenomenon, it is enough to consider that Kaws, their most representative artist, saw his media presence decrease by 46.64%.

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