Approaching emerging art means coming into contact with artists whose trajectories are still being built. For a collector, this can be especially interesting: it allows you to discover new languages, get to know certain creative processes closely and accompany an artistic career from relatively early stages.

But it also raises questions. What do we really mean by emerging artist? What should we look for before buying? How do you determine the price of a work when an artist is still developing his market? And does it make sense to talk about emerging art as an investment?

There is no formula that allows us to know which artists will achieve greater recognition in ten or twenty years. There are, however, a number of elements that can help us better understand an artistic trajectory and buy art with greater criteria.

What does it really mean for an artist to be emerging?

One of the first mistakes is automatically associating emerging artist with young artist. Age is not necessarily the determining factor. When we talk about emerging art, we usually refer to creators who are at a stage of development, visibility and consolidation of their professional career.

Some may be taking their first steps after their training; others have been working for years and are now beginning to receive greater attention from galleries, curators, collections or institutions.

Precisely there resides much of the appeal of collecting emerging art. The buyer approaches a trajectory while it is still evolving and can observe how an initial investigation is transformed, new series appear or certain interests acquire more depth.

The current context is also especially interesting for those who start collecting. The Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report 2026 shows that, during 2025, growth was especially strong among dealers located in the lowest billing segments, while the global market grew moderately again to reach an estimated sales of 59.6 billion dollars.

This data does not mean that all the emerging art is growing or that buying it guarantees a future revaluation. They do show a much broader and more diverse market than the one formed solely by the large operations that usually star the headlines.

Exhibition at Marquesa Gallery by artist Lauren Januhowski

Buying Emerging Art: Learning to Look Beyond a Work

The connection to a work matters. A lot. But when we think about starting or developing a collection of contemporary art, it can be interesting to go a little beyond that first impact.

One of the first issues worth noting is the coherence of the artist’s practice. It does not mean that all of his works should look alike; in fact, evolution is an essential part of any career. It is about trying to understand if behind different pieces there is research, questions or a language that develops over time.

That is why it is interesting to know other works of the artist, investigate previous series and understand the place of the piece that interests us within its production. An isolated work can attract us visually, but knowing its context allows us to see it differently.

We can also pay attention to his career: individual and collective exhibitions, galleries with which he works, residencies, awards, publications, curated projects or presence in collections. None of these elements guarantees the future of an artist by itself and there is no list of requirements to be met. The important thing is to understand how your career is being built.

In fact, the primary market itself works to a large extent through that progressive construction. Art Basel explains in its introduction to the functioning of the market that the development of prices of lesser-known artists usually occurs gradually and can be related, among other factors, to the demand for collectors, institutional exhibitions, museum acquisitions, production costs and career evolution.

How do you set the price of an emerging artist?

This is probably one of the questions that generates the most doubts when someone starts buying emerging art.

The price of a work should not be an arbitrary figure. In the primary market there is usually a structure that takes into account aspects such as the size, the technique, the complexity of production, the moment of the artist’s trajectory and the relationship between some works and others.

When a career evolves positively and demand increases, prices can go up. But a healthy evolution is usually progressive. A rapid increase in prices is not necessarily a good sign, just as an accessible price does not mean that a work has lower artistic value.

Here appears a fundamental difference between the primary market and the secondary market of art. In the primary market, where artists and galleries normally work, there is a willingness to build a career and maintain a certain price consistency. In the secondary, especially at auction, prices can be subject to much sharper movements.

Therefore, before buying, it is perfectly reasonable to ask the gallery about the trajectory of the artist, know other works available, understand how their price is structured or request information about previous exhibitions and projects. Asking is part of collecting.

Is buying emerging art an investment?

It is inevitable that this question will arise. And it deserves a prudent response.

Buying a work at an early stage of a career can mean accessing an artist’s work before it reaches greater visibility and, eventually, before their prices evolve. But there is no guarantee of revaluation.

Art does not have the liquidity of other assets and the development of a career depends on numerous factors. Turning the purchase of emerging art only into a search for the next artist whose price will multiply can lead us to lose sight of something much more interesting: the possibility of building a collection with its own criteria.

Recent data also shows that motivations and ways of buying are evolving. The Art Basel and UBS Survey of Global Collecting 2025, carried out among 3,100 high heritage collectors from ten markets, detected a high participation of younger generations and a growing interest in maintaining a more direct contact with artists and with the artistic ecosystem. In 2026, Art Basel further noted that studio visits by artists had experienced particularly significant growth among the collectors studied.

This points to an interesting idea: collecting is not only about owning works, but also about knowing and accompanying the processes that exist behind them.

Gallery as accompaniment to discover new artists

In the case of emerging art, the role of a gallery takes on special importance because there is still less historical information about the artist’s trajectory.

A gallery can explain where a certain series comes from, show previous works, contextualize a work within the artist’s production and provide information on exhibitions, projects and price evolution. His job is not only to make a sale, but also to accompany the construction of the artist’s career and provide the collector with the necessary tools to understand it.

The Art Basel and UBS 2026 report notes precisely that, although direct purchases from artists have increased, galleries and dealers continue to perform functions that go far beyond the transaction: they contribute to creating markets for artists, contextualizing their early works and building and sustaining their careers.

For those who are thinking of buying their first work, perhaps the best advice is simple: visit exhibitions, go into galleries, ask questions, compare and spend time looking. Taste is also educated and evolves.

Buying emerging art is not about trying to guess who will be the next big name in the market. It consists of discovering a work that interests us, understanding the thought and trajectory that exist behind it and deciding if we want to incorporate it into our collection.

And perhaps that is one of the most stimulating parts of collecting: being able to look at a work years later and remember not only when we bought it, but also at what point in its history we find the artist.

[author _ rocio]