Loie Hollowell Value: Top Prices Paid at Auction

Created during a pivotal period in Hollowell's career, Standing In Red (2019) achieved the artist's current auction record at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in April 2023, selling for 199.92% above its high estimate. This monumental result for a monumental work exemplifies Hollowell's building critical and commercial success. The piece demonstrates Hollowell’s signature style of combining geometric abstraction with corporeal forms, using a dramatic red palette and the artist’s distinctive layering technique. Standing In Red demonstrates Hollowell's exploration of the relationship between the physical and metaphysical, juxtaposing straight lines with perfect curves.

When Linked Lingams (Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, Pink) (2018) sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong in June 2021, it set a new record. The previous record, achieved by First Contact (2018) just 10 days before, was a significant £400,000 less. The sale was, therefore, a significant milestone in Hollowell's secondary market and evidence of her increasing market momentum. The work's title references the Hindu symbol of divine generative energy, a theme that is reflected in Hollowell’s careful choice of gradating and contrasting colours. The painting's interlocking forms and three-dimensional surface elements create an interplay between light, shadow, and form, embodying Hollowell's interest in sacred geometry and bodily architecture.

Following the success of Linked Lingams (Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, Pink) (2018) at the Sotheby’s Hong Kong June 2021 auction, Lick Lick (2018) sold at Christie’s Hong Kong in December of the same year. The mixed media painting exemplifies Hollowell's bold exploration of intimate physical experiences through abstract forms; the range of techniques and materials employed, including sawdust and high-density foam, gives the piece the physical and emotional depth that is characteristic of Hollowell’s work. The work's suggestive title paired with its sophisticated formal composition demonstrates her ability to navigate between the explicit and the sublime. Hollowell herself described the Lick Lick series, each 21 by 28 inches, as “paintings of a psychological headspace,” the specific size chosen for “exploring the territory of the brain.”

This 2021 work, sold at Phillips Hong Kong in December 2022, showcases Hollowell's evolved artistic language. Split Orbs In Gray-Brown, Yellow, Purple, and Carmine (2021) demonstrates her mastery of colour theory and spatial relationships, with its soft, natural colour palette and characteristically interdependent curved shapes. It was created after Hollowell’s second pregnancy and is one of the nine-canvas Split Orbs series referencing the physical pain of labour and childbirth. The painting itself had been included in a number of prestigious exhibitions of Hollowell’s work since its creation: notably, at Pace Gallery, New York, and the Sacred Contract exhibition at König Galerie, Berlin.

Achieving 150% of its high estimate at Christie's Hong Kong in May 2022, Touchy Subject (2018) sold out of a private collection after display at Pace Gallery, London. The piece’s popularity comes from its use of finger-like, circular, and yonic shapes that are quintessential of Hollowell’s work, as well as its scale and depth of colour. Its tactile surface, layered using sawdust, foam, oil, and acrylic medium, creates a texture that sits in contradiction with the smoothness of its colour gradients. Its sale in 2022 proved that Hollowell’s record-breaking previous year had been symptomatic of an exponential growth in popularity, particularly in the Asian market.

Full Frontal (In Green) (2014) is an important early example of Hollowell's mature style, achieving its impressive result at China Guardian Auctions in November 2021. This work represents a crucial moment in her artistic development, showing the emergence of her characteristic mandorla forms and dimensional surfaces, but also the initial ambiguity of subject that is baked into all of Hollowell’s work. Its precise, split circular shapes and concentric orbits are immediately reminiscent of a solar system, while also resembling the naked female form. The piece demonstrates Hollowell’s early mastery of the mixed media techniques and applications that would come to define her practice.

When Lick Lick In Purple, Maroon-Yellow (2016-19) sold at Phillips New York in November 2022, it set a new US record for Hollowell at the time. It marked the significance of Hollowell’s global growth in popularity, outside the Asian market where her work was particularly excelling. The work's extended creation period, spanning three years, reveals her careful consideration of composition and the complexities of her layering technique, but also ensures that Lick Lick In Purple, Maroon-Yellow stands out as an example of Hollowell’s evolving mature style.

First Contact (2018), sold at Phillips & Poly Hong Kong in June 2021, was originally displayed at Hollowell’s first solo exhibition in the UK, at Pace Gallery, London, from August to September 2018. Its subject, with ogee shapes emerging from the bottom of the canvas, alludes to both sperm cells and the phases of the moon, speaking to Hollowell’s popular themes of fertility and conception - the work was created while the artist was trying to conceive her first child, who was born in December 2018. Like many of Hollowell’s works, First Contact is directly proportional to the size of the body part depicted; in this instance, anatomically scaled to the artist’s breast.

Achieving a strong result at the Christie’s New York 20th Century Evening Sale in November 2023, Standing In A Desert (2020) demonstrates the continued market enthusiasm for Hollowell's recent work - its sale marked the end of a three-year period in which Hollowell’s value grew by more than 1,200%. The painting was created during the uncertainty of the global pandemic and introduces a new thematic spin on imagery that Hollowell had used frequently before. Standing In A Desert not only exemplifies the artist’s exploration of the bodily landscape through abstract means, but also alludes to the sidelined role of female artists in the development of abstraction itself. Like all of Hollowell’s work, it holds autobiographical significance that is as layered as her painting techniques.

When Point of Entry (Blood-Orange Moon Over Orange Sac) (2017) sold at Clars Auction Gallery in California for twice its low estimate in March 2022, it marked the first time a lot had surpassed the million-dollar mark in the gallery’s 50-year history ($1,050,000 including buyer’s premium). The composition abstracts elements of the female form, with colours (as suggested by the title) that allude to the female connection to nature and the passage of time. The rich, glowing colours, soft curves, and precise measurements and composition are reflective of both celestial imagery and bodily forms; cosmic and corporeal.