How Artist Yoshitomo Nara’s Return to Japan After 12 Years Abroad Reshaped His Style

By Eileen Kinsella

Original title: How Artist Yoshitomo Nara’s Return to Japan After 12 Years Abroad Reshaped His Style—and Supercharged His Soaring Market

A small girl in a red dress with one hand hidden behind her back glowers defiantly. Is she a harmless child in the throes of a tantrum, or something more sinister? The simple but cheeky title—Knife Behind Back—yields a sobering clue.

The painting, created in 2000 by the Japanese sensation Yoshitomo Nara, soared to a final price of $24.9 million when it was offered at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in October 2019, roughly five times the artist’s previous auction record of around $5 million at the time.

Yoshitomo Nara Knife Behind Back (2000). Courtesy Sotheby’s Hong Kong.

For the past three decades, Nara’s signature characters—cartoonish, endearing little girls with big heads and giant eyes, sometimes with angry expressions, other times looking angelic or contemplative—have found audiences around the world, and been eagerly snapped up by collectors.

But in recent years, there has been a noticeable uptick in his market, fueled in part by a generation of young, savvy collectors, and evidenced by the fact that the 13 highest auction prices to date for his works were achieved only in 2019 and 2020...READ MORE

Cover Image: Yoshitomo Nara. Photo credit: Ryoichi Kawajiri. Courtesy of Pace Gallery.