Acquiring a painting directly from the artist's studio

Most art changes hands through intermediaries: galleries, fairs, auction houses. Each plays a real role - and each stands between you and the person who made the work. Buying directly from an artist's studio is the older model, and for living artists it remains the most direct one. Here is how it works in practice, using this studio in Lille as the example.

Why collectors go to the studio

Three reasons come up again and again. Provenance: when you acquire from the studio, the first line of the work's ownership history is written with the artist herself - no gaps, no attribution questions, nothing to reconstruct later. Context: in the studio you see the work among its siblings, the torn paper and pigments it came from, the series it belongs to. A painting understood is a painting you keep. Access: works that never reach a fair or a gallery wall - large formats, recent series, pieces the artist has held back - are visible only there.

The visit

Studio visits in Lille happen by appointment. Expect an hour, not ten minutes: the point is to see works in daylight, at their real scale, and to hear where they come from. Nothing about the visit commits you to anything. If a work stays with you after you leave, that is usually the sign collectors trust most.

Enquiring from abroad

Most first contacts are remote. Write through the site or call, name the work that interests you and ask for what you need to decide: additional photographs in neutral light, a short video, close-ups of the surface - collage and charcoal are physical techniques and the surface is where they live - and the exact dimensions with and without frame. A serious enquiry gets a personal reply, not an automated one.

What determines the price

For a living artist with a forty-year exhibition history, prices follow a small set of factors: format, technique and material complexity, the place of the work within a series and its exhibition or screen history. Two of the works in this collection appeared in a Palme d'Or-winning film; that is part of their biography and their documentation. Prices are given on request, per work - which is standard for studio sales and lets the conversation start from the work rather than from a list.

Paperwork and delivery

Ask for a signed certificate of authenticity and an invoice naming the work, its technique and dimensions - any serious studio provides both. Framing, packing and delivery are arranged case by case when you enquire; large formats travel crated, smaller works travel framed or rolled depending on the technique. None of this is exotic: it is the same logistics a gallery would use, without the gallery between you and the answers.

Where to start

Browse the collection, open the works that hold you and enquire about the one that will not let go. Every enquiry reaches the studio directly.

Browse the collection · Read: film provenance