Buying Direct From The Artist Beats Auction Or Gallery

In short: Sotheby's is opening its first single-artist selling exhibition at the Breuer Building this summer — fixed prices, no bidding, organized directly with the Botero Foundation. It's a useful reminder that buying art directly from the artist isn't the only alternative to an auction house; it's often the more transparent one. A selling exhibition removes the bidding war. Buying directly from a working artist's studio removes the markup too, and adds a real relationship neither the saleroom nor a gallery wall can offer.

Angela Simeone is a Nashville-based contemporary abstract painter whose boutique luxury wallpaper line is created from her own paintings and composed — through her artistic and editorial eye — into layered, original, chic patterns, printed on a single luxurious 20 oz vinyl that looks like raw silk with a glimmering sheen, sold direct and to the trade.

What's The Real Difference Between An Auction And A Selling Exhibition?

"Botero in New York," on view July 22 through September 7, 2026 at Sotheby's Breuer Building, is the auction house's first exhibition there devoted entirely to a single artist — organized directly with the Botero Foundation and built around Fernando Botero's overlooked New York years, 1960 to 1973. It's explicitly a selling exhibition: fixed prices set in advance, no bidding floor, no gavel. Anna Di Stasi, Sotheby's Global Head of Latin American Art, explained the choice this way: "Botero was a natural choice for Sotheby's first single-artist exhibition at the Breuer because few artists connect so directly to both New York and a global public. It was here that Botero clarified the visual language that would make him one of the most recognizable artists of the twentieth century." A selling exhibition and an auction both happen inside the same building, under the same house — but they ask a buyer to make a very different kind of decision. An auction asks you to compete. A selling exhibition asks you to choose.

Does A Fixed Price Actually Protect The Buyer?

Emma McKee, director of Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, put the case for fixed pricing plainly: her gallery's policy is to not negotiate case-by-case, a decision made "out of protection of the market and out of transparency for our clients, which aids in creating a trusting relationship with clients." That's the real argument for a fixed price, whether it's a gallery wall or a selling exhibition: you and the next buyer are looking at the same number, and neither of you is guessing what the other paid. An auction removes that certainty entirely — the final price is whatever the room decides, in real time, against buyers you can't see.

What A Direct Studio Purchase Removes That Neither Can

Art advisor Wendy Goldsmith, writing in Artnet News' "Ask an Advisor" column, answered a reader's question about buying straight out of a young artist's studio with real caution: "I would always suggest going through a gallery to acquire an artist, but this situation feels like a rare exception." That caution makes sense for an emerging artist who already has a gallery relationship a collector might be routing around. It doesn't apply the same way to a working artist, like myself, who has never had gallery representation and sells every piece — inventory and commissions alike — directly from my own studio. There's no relationship to route around, no dealer's markup built into the number, and no bidding war to sit through. The market itself is moving this direction: the Art Basel/UBS Survey of Global Collecting found that 63% of collectors bought directly from an artist in 2024–2025, with studio visits averaging seven per collector that year alone.

What This Means Before You Buy

Leo Tolstoy, writing on what art actually does between two people, described it as a direct transmission: "Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them." That handing-on is easiest to trace when nothing sits between the hand that made the work and the person who buys it. Andy Warhol, characteristically blunt about the American relationship to buying, wrote: "Buying is much more American than thinking, and I'm as American as they come" — a reminder that the decision to buy is its own act, not a lesser one to the decision to admire. Marcel Duchamp located the whole value of art in the person behind it, not the market around it: "I believe art is the only form of human activity in which man as man shows himself to be a true individual, capable of going beyond the animal state." Michelangelo, describing his own process in the most literal terms available to a sculptor, said: "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free" — the hand and the object never separated by an intermediary. And Berthe Morisot put the case for the maker's own understanding most simply: "Real painters understand with a brush in their hand." An auction, a selling exhibition, and a direct studio purchase can all put a real painting on your wall. Only one of them lets you ask the hand that made it a question.

Every painting in my studio is one-of-one, priced once, and sold direct — no gallery, no markup, no bidding floor. Browse the current paintings available now, or start a conversation about a commission if you want a piece built to your own room from the ground up.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the difference between an auction and a selling exhibition?
An auction sets a final price through competitive bidding in real time. A selling exhibition sets a fixed price in advance, with no bidding floor.

Is it cheaper to buy at auction than through a gallery or directly from an artist?
Not reliably. A fixed price, whether from a gallery, selling exhibition, or artist's studio, is the only price you can count on in advance.

Is buying directly from an artist's studio risky?
It depends on the artist. A working artist selling direct should offer a certificate of authenticity, clear provenance, and real communication through the process.

What do I actually gain by buying directly from a working artist?
No dealer's markup, no bidding uncertainty, and direct access to the person who made the work.

Sources: Sotheby's, "Botero in New York" exhibition materials, 2026 (Anna Di Stasi); Artsy, "A New Collector's Guide to Negotiating Discounts on Art Prices with Galleries" (Emma McKee, Mariane Ibrahim Gallery); Artnet News, "Ask an Advisor" column (Wendy Goldsmith); Art Basel & UBS Survey of Global Collecting, 2024–2025; Leo Tolstoy, "What Is Art?," 1897; Andy Warhol, "The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again)," 1975; Marcel Duchamp, 1961 interview statement; Michelangelo Buonarroti, widely documented statement; Berthe Morisot, quoted in Anne Higonnet, "Berthe Morisot," University of California Press, 1995.