The Most Expensive Paintings You Probably Could Have Painted Yourself

Artist: Cy Twombly
Year Completed: 1970
Sold For: $70.5 million* 

This painting, undeniably, looks like chalk drawings on a slab of slate. In reality, it’s oil-based paint on a canvas. Still, you might be scratching your head wondering why Untitled, 1970 is a hit when you could easily paint that yourself.

Untitled (1970) - Cy Twombly ©Wally Gobetz/flickr

You’ll be only more confused when you learn that Untitled, painted by Cy Twombly set a massive auction record at $70.5 million in 2015. The art market definitely responded in full force to this “blackboard” painting, and Untitled was part of a $295 million auction total of post-war and contemporary art. No doubt Twombly’s famous name helped boost the price.

Artist: Barnett Newman
Year Completed: 1961
Sold For: $84.2 million* 

Barnett Newman was an American painter who remains one of abstract expressionism’s major figures. He was a color field painter, and everything he painted sold for tens of millions of dollars, even though they didn’t look like anything.

Black Fire 1 - Barnett Newman ©Barnett Newman/Wikimedia Commons

For example, Black Fire 1 looks like something you’d find at Bed Bath & Beyond. The painting, completed in 1961, was far more valuable than wall art, however. In 2014, a private collector purchased Black Fire 1 for $84.2 million. The art sale, located at New York City’s Rockefeller Plaza, well exceeded the expectations of $50 million that Christie’s, its auctioning house, set for it.  

Artist: Willem de Kooning
Year Completed: 1955
Amount Sold For: $85.4 million* 

Police Gazette was painted by Willem de Kooning in 1955. The abstract artist’s work is simple, using yellow, green, red, and blue to tell a complicated tale. It was Police Gazette that made de Kooning one of the world’s most famous and important abstract painters.

Police Gazette - Willem de Kooning ©DatBot/Wikimedia Commons

In 1965, Police Gazette sold for the first time for $337,700. Eight years later, it sold for $1.166 million, which was a record-breaking amount at the time for de Kooning. Since then, Police Gazette has changed hands quite a few times to art collectors like Mrs. Scull, Sidney Janis, and Eugene V. Thaw, among others. In 2006, Steven Cohen purchased it for $85.4 million. 

Artist: Mark Rothko
Year Completed: 1961
Amount Sold For: $102.5 million* 

Orange, Red, Yellow, a 1961 Color Field painting created by Mark Rothko, is a seminal work in post-war contemporary art. The painting is acrylic on canvas and was acquired in the late 1960s by David Pincus, one of the leading art collectors of that era. The work vanished from the market after Pincus acquired it, remaining in his hands for forty-five years.

Orange, Red, Yellow - Mark Rothko ©Cate Gillon/Getty Images

It then was exhibited in several galleries in London and Philadelphia until 2012, when it was sold at auction for $102.5 million (buyer’s premium included). This set a new record for Rothko and for the field of post-WWII contemporary art. 

Artist: Gehrard Richter
Year Completed: 1991
Sold For: $1.1 million* 

If you walked into someone’s house and saw a red square on the wall, and the homeowner told you he paid over $1 million for it, what would your reaction be? For Mirror, Blood Red, a painting completed in 1991, that was exactly what happened. A collector purchased this Gehrard Richter work of art for $1.1 million.

Mirror, Blood Red - Gerhard Richter @metmuseum/Pinterest

The painting is oil on glass. That means that any of us could go to Home Depot, pick up a canister of red paint and a pane of glass, and paint this exact artwork. But, we probably wouldn’t even be able to sell it on Facebook Marketplace for $10. 

Artist: Joan Miro
Year Completed: 1927
Sold For: $2.21 million* 

Do you have kids who like to draw? Do their drawings look like this impressionist piece of art? If so, you might be surprised at what they could make from it. Joan Miro, an artist born in 1893 who lived until 1983, painted Peinture (Le Chien) in the late 1920s. This painting sold for well over $2 million in November of 2010.

Peinture (Le Chien)- Joan Miró @mundopuntocom/Pinterest

Miro painted this dog-like work of art when he was closing on his “dream” or “oneiric” pictures series. The paintings were created in Miro’s home in Catalunya from 1925 until 1927. Simple and rudimentary though they may seem, they’ve made millions at auction.

Artist: Blinky Palermo
Year Completed: 1969
Sold For: $1.7 million* 

In the late 1960s, artist Blinky Palermo found a cotton canvas, blue paint, and a paintbrush. He then painted Untitled (Stoffbild), a simplistic painting that sold for $1.7 million. Though Palermo was famous for doing a lot of drugs and partying (the two things that eventually killed him), his paintings didn’t reflect that.

Untitled (Stoffbild) - Blinky Palermo @elairedelmar69/Pinterest

His mode of art was to use plain, rectangular fabric canvases on which he painted one or two (or three, if he was feeling daring) colors. In 2010, Gerhard and Anna Lenz, two art collectors, were so taken with Untitled they bought it for their collection at a Sotheby’s auction in London. 

Artist: Jasper Johns
Year Completed: 1959
Amount Sold For: $107.5 million* 

False Start, painted by Jasper Johns in the late 1950s, is meant to be an explosion of color, almost like a pyrotechnic display on a canvas. Johns was a leader in the abstract expressionism movement of the post-WWII era, and his paintings have gone on to sell for tens of millions, with False Start cracking the $100 million ceiling.

False Start - Jasper Johns ©dou_ble_you/flickr

In 2006, Ken Griffin, the manager of Citadel, along with Anne Griffin, his wife, bought False Start for $107.5 million (inflation-adjusted). This was a big leap from its 1988 sale price of $41.32 million, representing the fact that the art market has skyrocketed in recent decades.

Artist: Piet Mondrian
Year Completed: 1929
Sold For: $50.6 million* 

Dutch artist Piet Mondrian painted the painting that makes people walk into art galleries and say, “I could’ve done that.” Despite the simplicity, the oil painter’s works have sold for tens of millions at auction. This red, blue, black, and yellow painting was completed in the geometric style for which Mondrian was renowned.

Composition C, 1929- Piet Mondrian ©Public Domain/Wikiart.org

Composition C, also known as Composition III, was completed in the late 1920s. Years later, it set an auction record when it sold for more than $50 million in New York. This was more than double its pre-auction estimate, where collectors believed Composition C would make just $25 million.    

Artist: Josef Albers
Year Completed: 1959
Sold For: $2.21 million* 

Guggenheim called this work “disarmingly simple.” It is definitely simple, as it has squares of oil color and nothing else. Appropriately titled Homage to the Square: White Nimbus, this painting was completed in 1959 by artist Josef Albers. It would later sell for $2.21 million.

Homage to the Square: White Nimbus, 1959 Josef Albers @ngsrc/Pinterest

Albers was known for his disciplined take on color theory and, if we were to guess, his love of shapes. To be fair, it can’t have been easy painting a square with such perfect lines. If he was able to paint that freehand, then that justifies the painting selling for millions, even though it has one shape and nothing else.

Artist: Kenneth Noland
Year Completed: 1958
Sold For: $797,750* 

Painter Kenneth Noland was one of the most famous Color Field painters in America, though people mislabeled him as an abstract expressionist and minimalist throughout much of his career. His famous artworks include Gift, Drought, Another Line, Shift, October, New Day, and Circle.

Circle, 1958 - Kenneth Noland @christiesinc/Pinterest

Circle, as you might have guessed from the name, features a series of concentric, colorful circles. This work would later sell for hundreds of thousands at auction, marking the highest sale price this author experienced. The medium was soaked with dilute acrylic paint on unstretched cotton canvas, for those who want to DIY this painting at home. 

Artist: William de Kooning
Year Completed: 1955
Sold For: $300 million* 

You might not be able to do this painting yourself unless you had a lot of patience, as it is a massive canvas. Interchange, by Willem de Kooning, stretches 79 by 69 inches. The oil-on-canvas abstract work is worth $300 million, according to an auction in September of 2015. That makes Interchange one of the most expensive paintings of all time.

Interchange, 1955 - William de Kooning ©Andrew Cho/Wikimedia Commons

Right now, Kenneth C. Griffin owns this painting in his private collection. But, he generously loaned it to the Art Institute of Chicago, where it is on display for anyone who wants to take a gander and see if they could create this painting themselves. 

Artist: Yves Klein
Year Completed: 1956
Sold For: $3.3 million*

Once again, you could walk into a store, buy a canvas, paint it blue, and have a moderately-skilled reproduction of this painting. Art gurus might not like that statement but, functionally, it’s true. Painted by Yves Klein in 1956, this blue square sold for millions at Christie’s.

Untitled Blue Monochrome, 1956 - Yves Klein @lan2397508336/Pinterest

Yves Klein was known for “Klein Blue,” his intense, signature shade. According to Christie’s, Untitled Blue Monochrome is an “important” work from Klein because it was one of the first iconic blue paintings by the artist. For those wondering why it’s blue, the color has something to do with the artist adventuring into “the void.”

Artist: Jasper Johns
Year Completed: 1958
Amount Sold For: $130 million* 

When artist Jasper Johns was in his mid-twenties, he was discharged from the Army. After that, he painted Flag, an encaustic work. The painting was one of many that Johns created out of an inspiration to redesign the American flag. Flag is arguably the piece for which the painter is best known.

Flag - Jasper Johns ©carmelod/Shutterstock.com

Johns, described as an “American legend” by The New York Times, created more than forty works based on the American flag. This version, completed in 1958, was the most expensive painting ever sold by a living artist in 2010 when Steven Cohen bought it for $130 million.