The auction houses that for years have dominated and have played an extremely important role in the art market are mainly three: Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips.
Together they represent 70% of the contemporary art market by turnover.
The market shares that these three auction houses manage are as follows:
- Sotheby’s: 32.9%
- Christie’s: 25.4%
- Phillips: 11.9%
Eventually, over the past years, the same triad has embraced and generated a large volume of sales in the NFT space.
Christie’s in particular was the first international auction house to register the sale of works on the Blockchain.
Additionally, it was the first auction house to sell a work of art created by the artificial intelligence / AI of the Obvious collective – Portrait of Edward de Belamy, 2018 – for $ 432,500.
Much has changed since 2018: for this reason only for the year just passed – 2021 – we have created a timeline with all the auctions that took place in the main auction houses, where it is possible to see how NFTs have fully entered into large sales effectively relaunching the second market in the art world.
