Due to the lingering pandemic, Frieze Los Angeles postponed its physical art fair until next year and has offered online viewing rooms instead, made available for everyone until August 1st. Below I have chosen five artworks ranging from a little over $4,000 to $20,000. An art fair famous among the Hollywood elite due to the million-dollar price tag on some of the artworks, I say this list is pretty impressive not only in prices but also in quality. Continue reading to find out my top picks.
SARA ANSTIS (b.1991, Sweden)
Various Small Fires (VSF), L.A.
Butterflies, 2021 $ 4,832
Sara Anstis is an emerging artist that works in soft pastel drawings primarily depicting female figures that inhabit imaginary worlds.
Anstis was raised on a small island off the Canadian west coast. Anstis received her BFA in Studio Art and Sociology from Concordia University in Montreal and her MFA in Fine Art from Valand Academy in Gothenburg. In 2018, she completed the Drawing Year Postgraduate Programme at the Royal Drawing School in London, UK. She lives and works in London, UK, and has participated in numerous exhibitions in Europe and North America.
JUDITH LINHARES (b. 1940, USA)
P·P·O·W, NYC
Lovers I, 2016
Under $5k
Judith Linhares, a California native, is an established painter that is known for her colorful figurative paintings. She formed part of the San Francisco Bay Area Counterculture of the 60s and 70s where she was influenced by Expressionism, Bay Area Figuration, Mexican modern art, and second-wave feminism. All of these influences led Linhares to create her unique style that balances visionary personal imagery, expressive intensity, and pictorial rigor.
Linhares received a BFA and MFA in Painting from California College of Arts (C.C.A.), Oakland, California. She has participated in over 40 one-person exhibitions and has received significant awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, among many others. Her work belongs to numerous public collections. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
CRISTINA DE MIGUEL (b.1987, Spain)
Fredericks & Freiser, NYC
Two heads with flowers, 2021
$ 6,000
Cristina de Miguel is a Spanish artist creating fresh paintings that capture moments, ideas, and emotions primarily expressed via a portrait and allegorical narrative often borrowed from old masterpieces. In an interview via Slayer Gallery, she states, “I am attracted to the direct and unaffected manner in which children illustrate coloring books, filling the black-outlined images with passionate scribbles of energy and carefree gestures.” It’s the calculated childlike scribbles and the vibrant colors of her work that make it so captivating.
De Miguel received a BFA from the University of Seville, Spain and an MFA from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. She has held a multitude of solo and group exhibitions throughout Europe and the US and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Earlier this month the artist recorded her first auction sale with her acrylic and crayon painting titled, Samba Fan (2021) which sold for £45,000 ($62,806), an astonishing 800% above its estimated price. With this high demand, don't expect to find her artwork to be available under 10k much longer.
SHIVA AHMADI (b. 1975, Iran)
Haines Gallery, San Francisco
The House, 2019
$ 12,500
Shiva Ahmadi is an American-Iranian artist whose practice borrows from the artistic traditions of Iran and the Middle East to examine global political tensions and social concerns critically. She works with painting, animation and sculpture. As seen in the image above, her work reflects the Persian tradition of miniature painting, primarily done in watercolor on paper and aqua board, with ornate floral patterns applied in gold ink. The scenes in her paintings are of abstract faceless figures surrounded by chaos with splattering maroon paint to suggest blood. Ahmadi draws from her memories of the Iran-Iraq War, which she experienced during her time in her home country of Iran.
Shiva Ahmadi studied at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI; Wayne State University, Detroit, MI; and Azad University, Tehran, Iran. She has participated in a multitude of solo exhibitions around the world. Her work is part of the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Asia Society Museum, New York, NY; Grey Art Gallery, New York University, NY; Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Detroit Institute of Arts, MI; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, IL; Farjam Collection, Dubai, UAE; TDIC Corporate Collection, Abu Dhabi, UAE; and the private collection of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, among others. In 2016, Ahmadi was awarded the ‘Anonymous Was A Woman’ Award and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. She lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area in California, USA.
TAHA HEYDARI (b. 1986, Iran)
Haines Gallery, San Francisco
Diviner, 2019 $ 20,000
Taha Heydari deconstructs and recreates images from Iran's bygone era to map complex cultural changes. His striking, large-scale paintings examine the power of images: what they show, what they're made of, how they're transmitted, and their role in shaping culture and identity. He uses acrylic and various palette knives, rollers, and airbrush to create complex, highly detailed surfaces where he can accentuate the significance of tools, material, and technology in the act of representation.
Heydari received his BFA in Painting from Art University of Tehran, Iran and an MFA in Painting from LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Baltimore, Maryland. He has participated in group and solo exhibitions in the Middle East, Europe and the USA. He has been recognized with several awards, the most recent being the Individual Artist Award in Painting from the Maryland State Arts Council (MSAC), which he received in 2019. Hadari lives and works in Baltimore and he is represented by Haines Gallery in the US and Ab-Anbar Gallery in Tehran.