Jade Fadojutimi is a British contemporary artist who lives and works in London. A recent graduate of the Royal College of Art, Fadojutimi has seen a precipitous ascent to success: she is the youngest artist represented in the collection of the Tate, London, and has upcoming exhibitions planned for the Hepworth Wakefield and the Liverpool Biennial. Fadojutimi’s work is immersive and all-encompassing, featuring tightly woven lattices of ecstatic pigment and electric line. The raw but bubbly energy of her paintings reflects aspects of the artist’s own interiority, as she treats each canvas as an opportunity to explore undiscovered or under-interrogated aspects of her individuality.

Fadojutimi believes that color and personality mingle and encourage one another; the matrices of line and color resemble the psychedelic spindles of neural networks, actualizing the artist’s investigative efforts as visual translations of the artist’s explorations of identity and fluidity. Fadojutimi brings a frenetic energy to painting, as many of her works are completed in late-night bursts of creativity; what may start the night as a blank canvas often emerges in the morning as a finished work. Describing her practice in environmental terms, Fadojutimi strives to incorporate the ineffable associations of memory absorbed from the warm moments and special objects of life; taken against the societal backdrop of their creation, Fadojutimi’s paintings shine out as optimistic beacons for dark times.

Gagosian Gallery announced in September 2022, its representation of the young artist. To inaugurate the relationship, Fadojutimi will take over the gallery’s booth at Frieze London in October 2022 with an installation of new works. In her paintings, which are often monumental in scale, Fadojutimi orchestrates color, space, line, and movement in the service of fluid emotion and the quest for self-knowledge. She interprets everyday experience in ways that are at once compelling and confrontational, reflecting a drive to understand more completely otherwise indescribable but perpetually intertwined ideas of identity and beauty.

“Human. Animal. Natural. We all have souls; objects too. We are all beauty, and that is what is encapsulated by the word life.”

Making use of key visual elements from twentieth-century painting such as grids, layers, and the juxtaposition of disparate types of mark, Fadojutimi conjures a sense of transformation. Her compositions can suggest plants or microbes, marine landscapes or stained-glass windows, but edge consistently toward abstraction. Described by the artist as “environments,” these complex arrangements are built up with layers of oil paint, sometimes interrupted by oil pastel. Fadojutimi also combines elements of clothing—swatches of fabric and the shapes of stockings and bows—with ambiguous outlines to reflect the trauma of displacement (she alludes to a “familiar unfamiliarity” born of motion toward and away from recognizability).In other works, Fadojutimi draws inspiration from specific locations, cultures, objects, and sounds, especially Japanese anime, clothing, and soundtracks (she traveled to Japan after graduating from the Slade School of Fine Art, London, then again for a residency in 2016, and now returns to the country several times a year). Writing, too, is key to her process—sometimes she uses it to help articulate the subtleties of her painting; at other times she positions it in parallel to the visual by adopting a more poetic approach. For Fadojutimi, her roles as artist and writer are equally important aspects of her creative practice.

 

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Practical Information

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Jade Fadojutimi
British (Born 1993)
Category: Ultra-Contemporary

Now represented globally by Gagosian, Fadojutimi’s paintings were a highlight of The Milk of Dreams exhibition at the Central Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2022. Most recently, Fadojutumi was the subject of an acclaimed solo Exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield which closed in March 2023 as well at a solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, which closed in April 2022.

Public Collections

Fadojutimi’s paintings reside in prestigious museum collections, including The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, The Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, and The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, and at just 30 years old, Fadojutimi is the youngest artist in the collection of Tate, London.

Museum Exhibitions

THE HEPWORTH WAKEFIELD

Jadé Fadojutimi (hepworthwakefield.org)

ICA Miami

A point to pointlessness – Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (icamiami.org)

Gallery Representation

Gagosian

Jadé Fadojutimi | Gagosian

Artist website

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (jadefadojutimi.com)

 

 

 

PART I: SUMMARY

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Auction Market Overview

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2025 AUCTION STATISTICS
Turnover: USD 1,389,145
-84.2% vs. 2024
# Lots sold: 7
Sell-Through Rate: 88%

MARKET SEGMENTATION
New-York (42%) / London (41%) / Hong-Kong (17%)
(by value in 2024)

Highest Price Achieved at Auction:
GBP 1,552,500 / USD 1,968,570
(7 March 2024)

 

The first painting of Jade Fadojutimi to appear at auction sold for USD 378,000 at Phillips in New-York on 7 December 2020.

Auction Summary

 

2025 Auction Highlights

7 lots sold at auction in 2025 for a total turnover of USD 1,389,145. With 1 lot failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 88%. However, 3 lots were withdrawn in 2025: (1) at Sotheby’s in New-York, on 16 May 2025; (2) at Phillips in Hong-Kong, on 28 September 2025; and (3) at Phillips in London, on 16 October 2025.

2025 Top 3 Lots

The highest price for 2025 was achieved by an untitled painting dated 2024, that sold at Christie’s, in London, on 6 March 2025, for GBP 428,400 (USD 548,350). This is the only lot that sold for more than USD 500,000, contributing 39.5% of the total turnover for 2025.

2024 Auction Highlights

13 lots sold at auction in 2024 for a total turnover of USD 8,793,253. With 2 lots failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 87%. The highest price was achieved at Christie’s in London on 7 March 2024, for The Woven Warp Garden of Ponder, a painting dated 2021 that sold for GBP 1,552,500 (USD 1,968,570).

2024 Top 3 Lots

2 lots sold for more than USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 3,010,030, representing 30.4% of the total for 2024.

2023 Auction Highlights

 13 lots sold at auction in 2023 for a total turnover of USD 11,955,624. 2023 is a record year at auction for Jade Fadojutimi. The artist’s auction record was broken twice during the New-York auctions in November first at Christie’s on 7 November, then at Phillips on 14 November 2023 that set the new auction record for the artist at USD 1,935,000.

2023 Top 3 Lots

With two lots unsold in December, the sell-through rate is a solid 87%. 5 lots sold for more than USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 7,691,640, representing 64.3% of the total turnover for 2023.

2022 Auction Highlights

7 lots sold at auction in 2022 for a total turnover of USD 5,168,708. With no lot failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 100%. The highest price was achieved at Christie’s in London for Acquainted Intruder, a painting dated 2018 that sold for GBP 942,000 (USD 1,254,494) on 28 February 2022.

2022 Top 3 Lots

This is the only lot that sold for more than USD 1 million. All 7 lots sold for more than USD 500,000. 7 lots sold in London, the less expensive lot sold in New-York.

2021 Auction Highlights

11 lots sold at auction in 2021 for a total turnover of USD 8,560,802. With no lot failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 100%. The top lot, Myths of Pleasure (2017) was sold at Phillips in London on 15 October 2021 for GBP 1,172,000 (USD 1,612,326).

2021 Top 3 Lots

3 lots sold for more than USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 4,177,886, representing 49.8% of the total turnover for 2023.

 

 

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Top Lots

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#1. The Woven Warped Garden of Ponder, 2021

Christie’s London: 7 March 2024
Estimated: GBP 400,000 – 600,000
GBP 1,552,500 / USD 1,968,570

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993), The Woven Warped Garden of Ponder | Christie’s (christies.com)

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
The Woven Warped Garden of Ponder, 2021
Acrylic and oil on canvas
200×300 cm (78 7/8 x 118 1/4 inches)
Signed, initialed, titled and dated ‘Jadé Fadojutimi JF Oct ’21 ‘The Woven Warped Garden of Ponder”
(on the reverse)

#2. Quirk my mannerism, 2021

Phillips New-York: 14 November 2023
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 1,935,500

Jadé Fadojutimi – 20th Century & Co… Lot 46 November 2023 | Phillips

#3. Teeter towards me, 2019

Sotheby’s New-York: 15 November 2023
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 1,814,500

Teeter towards me | The Now Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JADE FADOJUTIMI (b. 1993)
Teeter towards me, 2019
Oil on canvas, in two parts
71 x 118 1/4 inches (180.2 x 300.4 cm)
Signed twice and variously inscribed (on the reverse of right panel)

#4. A Thistle Throb, 2021

Christie’s New-York: 7 November 2023
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 1,683,500

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993) (christies.com)

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
A Thistle Throb, 2021
Oil and acrylic on canvas
70 3/4 x 70 3/4 inches (179.6 x 179.6 cm)
Signed ‘JADÉ’ (on the stretcher)
Signed again, titled and dated ‘March ’21 Jadé Fadojutimi ‘A Thistle Throb” (on the reverse)

#5. Myths of Pleasure, 2017

Phillips London: 15 October 2021
Estimated: GBP 80,000 – 120,000
GBP 1,172,000 / USD 1,612,326

Jadé Fadojutimi – 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Friday, October 15, 2021 | Phillips

JADE FADOJUTIMI
Myths of Pleasure, 2017
Oil on canvas
140.5 x 140.5 cm (55 3/8 x 55 3/8 inches)
Signed, titled and dated ‘Jadé Fadojutimi Nov ’17 ‘Myths of Pleasure” on the reverse

 

 

PART II: AUCTION RESULTS

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2026 Upcoming Lots

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COMING SOON

 

 

 

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2025 Auction Results

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7 lots sold at auction in 2025 for a total turnover of USD 1,389,145. With 1 lot failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 88%. However, 3 lots were withdrawn in 2025: (1) at Sotheby’s in New-York, on 16 May 2025; (2) at Phillips in Hong-Kong, on 28 September 2025; and (3) at Phillips in London, on 16 October 2025.

The highest price for 2025 was achieved by an untitled painting dated 2024, that sold at Christie’s, in London, on 6 March 2025, for GBP 428,400 (USD 548,350). This is the only lot that sold for more than USD 500,000, contributing 39.5% of the total turnover for 2025.

2025 Top 3 Lots

 

#1. Untitled, 2024

Christie’s London: 6 March 2025
Estimated: GBP 350,000 – 450,000
GBP 428,400 / USD 548,352
READ MORE IN FOCUS SECTION

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993), Untitled | Christie’s

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
Untitled, 2024
Acrylic, oil pastel and oil bar on canvas
250×175 cm (98 3/8 x 68 7/8 inches)
Signed ‘Jadé Fadojutimi’ (on a label affixed to the stretcher)

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USD 500,000

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#2. Woven Futures, 2022

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 26 September 2025
Estimated: HKD 3,000,000 – 5,000,000
HKD 3,810,000 / USD 489,715

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993), Woven Futures | Christie’s

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
Woven Futures, 2022
Acrylic, oil, and oil pastel on canvas
170×180 cm (66 7/8 x 70 7/8 inches)
Signed with the artist’s intials, signed again, titled, and dated
‘JF Jadé Fadojutimi ‘Woven Figures’ Aug’22’
(on the reverse)

#3. Perhaps this is also a current pattern of life, 2020

Phillips London: 26 June 2025
Estimated: GBP 200,000 – 250,000
GBP 152,400 / USD 208,635
READ MORE IN FOCUS SECTION

Jadé Fadojutimi Modern & Contemporary Art: Evening & Day Sale

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USD 100,000

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#4. Bark, 2016

Phillips New-York: 21 November 2025
Estimated: USD 75,000 – 100,000
USD 96,750

Jadé Fadojutimi Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Afternoon Session

REPEAT SALE 

Phillips London: 12 October 2023
Estimated: GBP 70,000 – 100,000
GBP 69,850 / USD 86,020

Jadé Fadojutimi 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale

#5. Our Ephemeral Time, 2021

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 30 March 2025
Estimated: HKD 220,000 – 320,000
HKD 190,500 / USD 24,475

Jadé Fadojutimi 賈黛 · 法多朱蒂米 | Our Ephemeral Time 我們轉瞬即逝的時光 | Modern & Contemporary Day Auction | 2025 | Sotheby’s

JADE FADOJUTIMI (b. 1993)
Our Ephemeral Time, 2021
Marker, oil stick and acrylic on canvas
30×30 cm (11 3/4 x 11 3/4 inches)
Signed and dated April ’21 (on the reverse)

#6. Untitled (Study), 2017

Christie’s New-York: 27 February 2025
Estimated: USD 15,000 – 20,000
USD 15,120
WORK ON PAPER

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993), Untitled (Study) | Christie’s

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
Untitled (Study), 2017
Acrylic, marker and colored pencil on paper
59.1 x 41.6 cm (23 1/4 x 16 3/8 inches)
Signed twice, partially titled and dated ‘Study Jadé Fadojutimi Jadé Fadojutimi ’17’ (on the reverse)

#7. Drizzle, 2019

Phillips New-York: 11 March 2025
Estimated: USD 8,000 – 8,000
USD 6,096
WORK ON PAPER

Jadé Fadojutimi – Modern & Contempo… Lot 46 February 2025 | Phillips

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Lots Passed

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Untitled, 2022

Phillips New-York: 19 November 2025
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
PASSED

Jadé Fadojutimi Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale featuring Cera the Triceratops

JADE FADOJUTIMI
Untitled, 2022
Acrylic, oil and oil pastel on canvas
300×500 cm (118 1/8 x 196 7/8 inches)
Signed and dated “Jadé Fadojutimi Oct ’22 Jadé Fadojutimi” on the reverse

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Lots Withdrawn

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The Ties of Greed, 2017

Phillips London: 16 October 2025
Estimated: GBP 300,000 – 500,000
WITHDRAWN

JADE FADOJUTIMI
The Ties of Greed, 2017
Oil on canvas
140.8 x 160.8 cm (55 3/8 x 63 1/4 inches)
Signed, titled and dated on the reverse

Twigs, 2017

Specimen #11, 2019

Sotheby’s New-York: 16 May 2025
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 500,000
WITHDRAWN

JADE FADOJUTIMI (b. 1993)
Specimen #11, 2019
Oil on canvas
200×140 cm (78 3/4 x 55 1/8 inches)
Signed twice, titled and dated ’19 (on the reverse)

 

 

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2024 Auction Results

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13 lots sold at auction in 2024 for a total turnover of USD 8,793,253. With 2 lots failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 87%. The highest price was achieved at Christie’s in London on 7 March 2024, for The Woven Warp Garden of Ponder, a painting dated 2021 that sold for GBP 1,552,500 (USD 1,968,570).

2024 Top 3 Lots

2 lots sold for more than USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 3,010,030, representing 30.4% of the total for 2024.

#1. The Woven Warped Garden of Ponder, 2021

Christie’s London: 7 March 2024
Estimated: GBP 400,000 – 600,000
GBP 1,552,500 / USD 1,968,570
NEW AUCTION RECORD FOR THE ARTIST

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993), The Woven Warped Garden of Ponder | Christie’s (christies.com)

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
The Woven Warped Garden of Ponder, 2021
Acrylic and oil on canvas
200×300 cm (78 7/8 x 118 1/4 inches)
Signed, initialed, titled and dated ‘Jadé Fadojutimi JF Oct ’21 ‘The Woven Warped Garden of Ponder”
(on the reverse)

#2. The Pour, 2022

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 1,079,500

Jadé Fadojutimi – Modern & Contemporary A… Lot 8 May 2024 | Phillips

#5. (Hip) like a kaleidoscope (po), 2021

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 698,500

(Hip) like a kaleidoscope (po) | The Now Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JADE FADOJUTIMI (b. 1993)
(Hip) like a kaleidoscope (po), 2021
Oil, oilstick and acrylic on canvas
170×200 cm (66 7/8 x 78 5/8 inches)
Signed, dated March ’21 and variously inscribed (on the reverse)

#6. Vibe with Me, 2021

Christie’s London: 10 October 2024
Estimated: GBP 400,000 – 600,000
GBP 504,000 / USD 660,240

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993), Vibe with Me | Christie’s

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
Vibe with Me, 2021
Oil, acrylic and oil stick on canvas
190×170 cm (74 3/4 x 66 7/8 inches)
Signed, signed with the artist’s initials and dated ‘May ’21 Jadé Fadojutimi JF’ (on the reverse)

#7. A Sheltered Overthought, 2019

Sotheby’s London: 6 March 2024
Estimated: GBP 300,000 – 400,000
GBP 508,000 / USD 644,144

A Sheltered Overthought | Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction featuring The Now | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JADE FADOJUTIMI (b. 1993)
A Sheltered Overthought, 2019
Oil on canvas
175 x 165.2 cm (69×65 inches)
Signed twice and dated April ’19 (on the reverse)

#8. Even an awkward smile can sprout beyond the sun, 2021

Phillips New-York: 19 November 2024
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 571,500

Jadé Fadojutimi – Modern & Contempor… Lot 8 November 2024 | Phillips

#9. Let’s do the burger jam, 2018

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 28 May 2024
Estimated: HKD 3,000,000 – 5,000,000
HKD 4,284,000 / USD 548,457

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993), Let’s do the burger jam | Christie’s (christies.com)

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
Let’s do the burger jam, 2018
Oil on canvas
201.5 x 191 cm (79 3/8 x 75 1/4 inches)
Signed (twice), titled, and dated ‘Jadé Fadojutimi Oct ’18 ‘Let’s do the burger jam’’ (on the reverse)

#10. The Luxury of Single Cell Organisms, 2019

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 529,200

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993), The Luxury of Single Cell Organisms | Christie’s (christies.com)

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
The Luxury of Single Cell Organisms, 2019
Oil on canvas
160×220 cm (63 x 86 5/8 inches)
Signed twice, titled and dated ‘Dec ’19 ‘The Luxury of Single Cell Organisms Jadé Fadojutimi JF’ (on the reverse)

#11. She’s Distressed, 2019

Christie’s London: 27 June 2024
Estimated: GBP 250,000 – 350,000
GBP 277,200 / USD 351,490

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993) (christies.com)

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
She’s Distressed, 2019
Oil on canvas
175.5 x 165.5 cm (69 1/8 x 65 1/8 inches)
Signed twice and dated ‘Jadé Fadojutimi March ’19’ (on the reverse)

#12. Fishing For Steps, 2017

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 April 2024
Estimated: HKD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
HKD 1,841,500 / USD 235,426

Jadé Fadojutimi 賈黛・法多朱蒂米 | Fishing For Steps 足跡的探尋 | The Now Evening Auction | Contemporary Art | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JADE FADOJUTIMI (b. 1993)
Fishing For Steps, 2017
Oil on canvas
100.5 x 145 cm (39 5/8 x 57 1/8 inches)
Signed, titled and dated 2017 on the reverse

#13. Untitled, 2015

Phillips London: 27 June 2024
Estimated: GBP 30,000 – 50,000
GBP 27,940 / USD 35,428

Jadé Fadojutimi – Modern & Contemporary… Lot 94 June 2024 | Phillips

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Lots Passed

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The Recurrence, 2021

Christie’s New-York: 22 November 2024
Estimated: USD 350,000 – 450,000
PASSED

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993), The Recurrence | Christie’s

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
The Recurrence, 2021
Oil and acrylic on canvas
179.7 x 140.3 cm (70 3/4 x 55 1/4 inches)
Signed twice and dated ‘May ’21 Jadé Fadojutimi Jadé Fadojutimi’ (on the reverse)

Let’s take a walk on a tangent, 2018

Christie’s London: 10 October 2024
Estimated: GBP 300,000 – 500,000
PASSED

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993), Let’s take a walk on a tangent | Christie’s (christies.com)

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
Let’s take a walk on a tangent, 2018
Oil on canvas, in two parts
Overall: 210×300 cm (82 7/8 x 118 1/2 inches)
Each: signed twice, titled and dated ‘Jadé Fadojutimi Nov ’18 ‘Let’s take a walk on a tangent” (on the reverse)

 

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2023 Auction Results

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 13 lots sold at auction in 2023 for a total turnover of USD 11,955,624.

2023 is a record year at auction for Jade Fadojutimi. The artist’s auction record was broken twice during the New-York auctions in November first at Christie’s on 7 November, then at Phillips on 14 November 2023 that set the new auction record for the artist at USD 1,935,000. With two lots unsold in December, the sell-through rate is a solid 87%. 5 lots sold for more than USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 7,691,640, representing 64.3% of the total turnover for 2023.

2023 Top 3 Lots

#1. Quirk my mannerism, 2021

Phillips New-York: 14 November 2023
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 1,935,500
NEW AUCTION RECORD FOR THE ARTIST

Jadé Fadojutimi – 20th Century & Co… Lot 46 November 2023 | Phillips

#2. Teeter towards me, 2019

Sotheby’s New-York: 15 November 2023
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 1,814,500

Teeter towards me | The Now Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s

JADE FADOJUTIMI (b. 1993)
Teeter towards me, 2019
Oil on canvas, in two parts
180.2 x 300.4 cm (71 x 118 1/4 inches)
Signed twice and variously inscribed (on the reverse of right panel)

#3. A Thistle Throb, 2021

Christie’s New-York: 7 November 2023
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 1,683,500

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993), A Thistle Throb | Christie’s

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
A Thistle Throb, 2021
Oil and acrylic on canvas
179.6 x 179.6 cm (70 3/4 x 70 3/4 inches)
Signed ‘JADÉ’ (on the stretcher)
Signed again, titled and dated ‘March ’21 Jadé Fadojutimi ‘A Thistle Throb” (on the reverse)

#4. Let’s Curl Up Inside My Collar, 2018

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 28 May 2023
Estimated: HKD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
HKD 9,072,000 / USD 1,158,147

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993), Let’s Curl Up Inside My Collar | Christie’s (christies.com)

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
Let’s Curl Up Inside My Collar, 2018
Oil on canvas
202×181 cm (79 1/2 x 71 1/4 inches)
Signed with artist’s signature, signed again and dated ‘Jadé Fadojutimi May ‘18’ (on the reverse)

#5. Turmoil, 2019

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 28 November 2023
Estimated: HKD 7,000,000 – 9,000,000
HKD 8,568,000 / USD 1,099,993

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993), Turmoil | Christie’s

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
Turmoil, 2019
Oil on canvas
190×200 cm (74 3/4 x 78 3/4 inches)
Signed, titled and dated ‘Jadé Fadojutimi ‘Turmoil’ Jan ’19’ (on the reverse)

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USD 1 million

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#6. A Toast to…?, 2020

Sotheby’s New-York: 18 May 2023
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 952,500

A Toast to…? | The Now Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JADE FADOJUTIMI (b. 1993)
A Toast to…?, 2020
Oil and oil stick on canvas
190×220 cm (74 3/4 x 86 5/8 inches)
Signed, titled and dated July ’20 (on the reverse)

#7. A Declaration of War, 2018

Bonhams New-York: 18 May 2023
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 932,775

Bonhams : JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993) A Declaration of War 2018

#8. Cradled, 2018

Sotheby’s London: 12 October 2023
Estimated: GBP 400,000 – 600,000
GBP 495,300 / USD 604,835

Cradled | The Now Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s

JADE FADOJUTIMI (b. 1993)
Cradled, 2018
Oil on canvas
181.3 x 170.5 cm (71 3/8 x 67 1/8 inches)
Signed twice and dated Jan ’18 (on the reverse)

#10. We All Have a Time Traveller’s Well, 2018

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 April 2022
Estimated: HKD 2,200,000 – 3,200,000
HKD 3,810,000 / USD 485,357

Jadé Fadojutimi 賈黛・法多朱蒂米 | We All Have a Time Traveller’s Well 我們都有時間旅行者之井 | 50th Anniversary Contemporary Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s

JADE FADOJUTIMI (b. 1993)
We All Have a Time Traveller’s Well, 2018
Oil on canvas
150×120 cm (59 x 47 1/4 inches)
Signed, titled and dated 2018 on the reverse

#11. Debris is welcome in this stream of thought, 2021

Phillips Hong-Kong: 6 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 4,000,000 – 7,000,000
HKD 3,556,000 / USD 454,057

#12. Beneath the Petticoat, 2018

Phillips London: 13 October 2023
Estimated: GBP 150,000 – 200,000
GBP 177,800 / USD 215,775

Jadé Fadojutimi – 20th Century & Con… Lot 10 October 2023 | Phillips

 

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2022 Auction Results

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7 lots sold at auction in 2022 for a total turnover of USD 5,168,708.

With no lot failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 100%. The highest price was achieved at Christie’s in London for Acquainted Intruder, a painting dated 2018 that sold for GBP 942,000 (USD 1,254,494) on 28 February 2022. This is the only lot that sold for more than USD 1 million. All 7 lots sold for more than USD 500,000. 7 lots sold in London, the less expensive lot sold in New-York.

2022 Top 3 Lots

 

#1. Acquainted Intruder, 2018

Christie’s London, 28 February 2022
Estimated: GBP 300,000 – 500,000
GBP 942,000 / USD 1,254,494

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993) (christies.com)

JADE FADOJUTIMI
Acquainted Intruder, 2018
Oil on canvas
180×210.5 cm (70.9×82.9 inches)

#2. A Cropped Perspective of This Whirlwind Effect, 2020

Phillips London: 3 March 2022
Estimated: GBP 150,000 – 200,000
GBP 627,500 / USD 835,886

Jadé Fadojutimi – 20th Century & Conte… Lot 32 March 2022 | Phillips

#4. Astray, 2017

Christie’s London, 27 June 2022
Estimated: GBP 400,000 – 600,000
GBP 567,000 / USD 692,054

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993) (christies.com)

JADE FADOJUTIMI
Astray, 2017
Oil on canvas
200×140 cm (78.7 x 55.1 inches)

#5. The Misguided Thrill of Frills, 2017

Sotheby’s London: 14 October 2022
Estimated: GBP 300,000 – 400,000
GBP 554,400 / USD 692,054

JADE FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
The Misguided Thrill of Frills, 2017
Oil on canvas
200×240 cm (78 ¼ x 94 ½ inches)
Signed Jadé Fadojutimi, titled The Misguided Thrill of Frills and dated April ’17 (on the reverse)

#6. Let me just button up this veiled hope, 2021

Sotheby’s London: 2 March 2022
Estimated: GBP 120,000 – 180,000
GBP 415,800 / USD 555,808

JADE FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
Let me just button up this veiled hope, 2021
Oil, acrylic and oilstick on canvas
180×170 cm (71×67 inches)
Signed Jadé Fadojutimi, dated Feb’ 2021 and variously inscribed (on the verso)

#7. She Squalls, 2018

Christie’s New-York: 9 May 2022
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 500,000
USD 504,000

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993) (christies.com)

JADE FADOJUTIMI
She Squalls, 2018
Oil on canvas
200.4×160.2 cm (78.9×63 inches)

 

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2021 Auction Results

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11 lots sold at auction in 2021 for a total turnover of USD 8,560,802.

With no lot failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 100%. The top lot, Myths of Pleasure (2017) was sold at Phillips in London on 15 October 2021 for GBP 1,172,000 (USD 1,612,326). 3 lots sold for more than USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 4,177,886, representing 49.8% of the total turnover for 2023.

2021 Top 3 Lots

#1. Myths of Pleasure, 2017

Phillips London: 15 October 2021
Estimated: GBP 80,000 – 120,000
GBP 1,172,000 / USD 1,612,326

Jadé Fadojutimi – 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Friday, October 15, 2021 | Phillips

JADE FADOJUTIMI
Myths of Pleasure, 2017
Oil on canvas
140.5 x 140.5 cm (55 3/8 x 55 3/8 inches)
Signed, titled and dated ‘Jadé Fadojutimi Nov ’17 ‘Myths of Pleasure” on the reverse

#2. A muddled mind that’s never confined, 2021

Sotheby’s London, 15 October 2021
Estimated: GBP 80,000 – 120,000
GBP 1,043,500 / USD 1,435,548

A Muddled Mind That’s Never Confined | Contemporary Art Day Auction | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JADE FADOJUTIMI
A Muddled Mind That’s Never Confined, 2021
Oil, acrylic and oilstick on canvas
180×190 cm (70.9×74.8 inches)

#3. The Barefooted Scurry Home, 2017

Sotheby’s London: 14 October 2021
Estimated: GBP 180,000 – 250,000
GBP 825,700 / USD 1,130,012

The Barefooted Scurry Home | Contemporary Art Evening Auction | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JADE FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
The Barefooted Scurry Home, 2017
Oil on canvas
170×190 cm (67 x 74 ⅞ inches)
Signed, signed with the artist’s initials, titled and dated Nov ’17 on the reverse

#4. My Umbrella Has A Nourishing Disguise, 2018

Phillips New-York: 17 November 2021
Estimated: USD 150,000 – 200,000
USD 877,000

Jadé Fadojutimi – 20th Century & Con… Lot 2 November 2021 | Phillips

#5. One Step, Two Step, 2018

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 1 December 2021
Estimated: HKD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
HKD 6,250,000 / USD 802,166

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993) (christies.com)

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
One Step, Two Step, 2018
Oil on canvas
201.5 x 161.5 cm (79 3⁄8 x 63 5⁄8 inches)
Signed, titled and dated ‘Jadé Fadojutimi ‘One step, two step Dec ’18’ (on the reverse)

#6. Under the Weather, 2017

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 9 October 2021
Estimated: HKD 1,300,000 – 1,900,000
HKD 6,225,000 / USD 799,645

Jadé Fadojutimi 賈黛・法多朱蒂米 | Under the Weather 不適 | Contemporary Art Evening Sale | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

 

JADE FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
Under the Weather, 2017
Oil on canvas
185×175 cm (72 ⅞ x 68 ⅞ inches)
Signed, titled and dated April 2017 on the reverse

#7. Fishing For Steps, 2017

Phillips Hong-Kong: 30 November 2021
Estimated: HKD 1,200,000 – 2,200,000
HKD 4,788,000 / USD 614,090

Jadé Fadojutimi – 20th Century & Co… Lot 51 November 2021 | Phillips

#8. I’m pirouetting the night away, 2019

Sotheby’s London: 29 June 2021
Estimated: HKD 80,000 – 120,000
GBP 402,200 / USD 556,832

I’m pirouetting the night away | 《我用腳尖把夜色旋開》 | Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JADE FADOJUTIMI (b. 1993)
I’m pirouetting the night away, 2019
Oil on canvas
145 x 91.1 cm (57 x 35 5/8 inches)
Signed, titled and dated Jan ’19 on the reverse

#9. Untitled, 2018

 

 

 

 

 

PART III: FOCUS

 

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Record Breakers

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Teeter towards me, 2019

Sotheby’s New-York: 15 November 2023
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 1,814,500

Teeter towards me | The Now Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JADE FADOJUTIMI (b. 1993)
Teeter towards me, 2019
Oil on canvas, in two parts
71 x 118 1/4 inches (180.2 x 300.4 cm)
Signed twice and variously inscribed (on the reverse of right panel)

A stunning mélange of rich, radiant hues and jubilant gesture, Teeter Towards me is a commanding example of Jadé Fadojutimi’s celebrated corpus of monumental abstractions. In her practice, Fadojutimi explores foundational elements of art history by layering grids, transparencies, and disparate methods of mark-making to illustrate processes of movement and burgeoning forms. In Teeter Towards me, arborescent pillars and cascading organic structures emerge, recalling a dense microscopic environment or lush landscape, which toe the line of abstraction and figuration, landscape and object. Teeter Towards me sublimely embodies the visually charged, rhythmic compositions that typify Fadojutimi’s complex ‘emotional landscapes,’ in which she reflects on her identity, everyday experiences, and memories through complex orchestration of color, space, and form.

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI AT HER STUDIO IN LONDON, 2022. PHOTO © DAVID LEVENE/EYEVINE/REDUX. ART © 2023 JADÉ FADOJUTIMI

Coalescing in a vibrant entropy of gesturally charged mark-making, Fadojutimi’s graphic composition seeks to mine facets of her own identity, mapping the social and cultural elements that frame her emotive environment. Inspired by her own experiences, memories, and trauma, Fadojutimi’s compositions pulsate with the dream-like energy and dynamism that she draws from Japanese anime, video games, and soundtracks. With the vivacious energy of Action Painting, the present work recalls the mark-making Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Joan Mitchell.

JACKSON POLLOCK, BLUE POLES, 1952. IMAGE © NATIONAL GALLERY OF AUSTRALIA, CANBERRA / PURCHASED 1973 / BRIDGEMAN IMAGES. ART © 2023 POLLOCK-KRASNER FOUNDATION / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK

Through her lyrical process of mark-making, Fadojutimi meticulously layers thin swathes of pigment with rhythmic caresses before intuitively scraping and scratching the painting’s luminous surface to leave a myriad of dancing grooves and sweeping strokes in her wake. With a rhythmic cadence of color and line, Fadjotumi’s abstractions render the emotional complications of identity itself, unfurling across the canvas as the viewer’s eyes trace each vibrant line and experimental mark, communicating her connection to memory with subtle figurative punctuations. Amidst a lush and overgrown composition of burgundy pigment, a joyous revelry of color emerges splashes of lemon yellow, dashes of magenta, and streaks of gold race across the surface. A testament to the artist’s capacity to push boundaries and reinvent the tenets of contemporary painting, Teeter Towards me is a paragon of Fadojutimi’s vibrant aesthetic universe.

Quirk my mannerism, 2021

Phillips New-York: 14 November 2023
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 1,935,500
NEW AUCTION RECORD FOR THE ARTIST

Jadé Fadojutimi – 20th Century & Co… Lot 46 November 2023 | Phillips

Quirk my mannerism, 2021, exemplifies the mix of spontaneity, emotional vulnerability, and exploration inherent to Jadé Fadojutimi’s artistic process—sweeping, softened arcs of green sway across the background of the canvas, as jagged streaks of oilstick dart in a colorful tangle of drawn lines. The artist often creates a painting in a single night, moving through the actions that form each composition like a midnight ballet—brushing broadly across the canvas ground, dripping concentrated pigments in gestural sweeps, and drawing onto the canvas with oil sticks, often directly onto still-wet paint layers. None of these steps are predetermined; but rather, they occur in the moment, as Fadojutimi follows her intuition through a process she calls “orchestrating randomness.”

Animation still from My Neighbor Totoro, dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 1988. Image: Photo 12 / Alamy Stock Photo 

Fadojutimi’s process follows in the footsteps of her twentieth-century forebears, including Lee Krasner and Joan Mitchell. These Abstract Expressionist painters emphasized spontaneity and the physical action of painting as central components of artmaking. Fadojutimi’s works build upon these traditions in distinctly contemporary ways, with a visually striking use of fluorescent colors and compositions that combine free line and fields of color.

Lee Krasner, Portrait in Green, 1969. The Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Artwork: © 2023 Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

These same dynamic combinations of line and color illustrate another major source of inspiration for the artist: Japanese anime. Within Quirk my mannerism, the neon pink and orange lines almost radiate with motion over the green and yellow background, as if depicting a character flying across an animated landscape. Fadojutimi also looks to more contemporary artists such as Amy Sillman, Laura Owens and Makiko Kudo, whose influence is evident particularly in the primacy of color in Fadojutimi’s practice and life.

A Thistle Throb, 2021

Christie’s New-York: 7 November 2023
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 1,683,500
NEW AUCTION RECORD FOR THE ARTIST

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993) (christies.com)

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
A Thistle Throb, 2021
Oil and acrylic on canvas
70 3/4 x 70 3/4 inches (179.6 x 179.6 cm)
Signed ‘JADÉ’ (on the stretcher)
Signed again, titled and dated ‘March ’21 Jadé Fadojutimi ‘A Thistle Throb” (on the reverse)

A Thistle Throb is a monumental and dazzling cornucopia of purple hues that recalls the deployment of this elusive color by Claude Monet, Gustav Klimt, and Helen Frankenthaler, something recently celebrated by Artforum in declaring that Fadojutimi “was giving Monet waterlilies” with her use of swirling, floral forms (K. Sutton, “Your Place or Mine? Kate Sutton around Amsterdam and London Art Weekends,” Artforum, June 8, 2023). Nearly six feet square, A Thistle Throb—a title that evokes movement, desire, and nature, is the artist’s vital contribution to the pantheon of abstraction. More than that, she has charted a unique and indispensable course in her deliberate and complex combination of figuration and abstraction. What results is a meditation on the personal.

 “When I change, the work changes. We hold each other up. I think the biggest difference I notice is in myself. Having conversations around my work means I have been having more conversations around myself.”

 A Thistle Throb is above all the impetus for a conversation.

A Thistle Throb has all the sensitivity to space and form as Paul Cezanne’s foundational still lifes. It creates its own world through a collage-like cosmos of pigment and line. An interesting comparison is to Cezanne’s Still Life with Blue Pot (1900-1906, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles), which, like A Thistle Throb, has a loosely pyramidal composition and features juxtapositions of blue and orange. Furthermore, not unlike the improvisations of Wassily Kandinsky, A Thistle Throb also has a lyrical element, as if it is comprised of floating musical notes. Like Kandinsky’s Blue Painting (1924, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York), A Thistle Throb allows color and form to work in tandem to create an orchestra.

“When I was really young, I wanted to be a fashion designer. And my dream is to be a composer. So now I call myself a composer of color.” 

It is no mistake that Fadojutimi also mentions fashion. The verdant scene in A Thistle Throb connects to the interest in floral patterns by designers like Rodarte, Marni, and Anna Sui. Given the artist’s interest in Asian culture, one could look back to the Chinese state of Qi (1046 BCE–221 BCE), where purple was the center of fashion (China was also the first culture to create a synthetic purple). In a Western context, scientific advancements in the nineteenth century brought about the possibility of purple garments for common people and not just royalty. In this period, purple became a favorite of the Pre-Raphaelites, evinced by canvases like John Everett Millais’s, A Huguenot, on Saint Bartholomew’s Day, Refusing to Shield Himself from Danger by Wearing the Roman Catholic Badge (1851–1852). A Thistle Throb further democratizes a historically exclusive color, without forsaking its characteristic appeal and luxuriousness.

Acquainted Intruder, 2018

Christie’s London, 28 February 2022
Estimated: GBP 300,000 – 500,000
GBP 942,000 / USD 1,254,494

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993) (christies.com)

JADE FADOJUTIMI
Acquainted Intruder, 2018
Oil on canvas
180×210.5 cm (70.9×82.9 inches)

Alive with colour, texture, light and movement, Acquainted Intruder (2018) is a vast and exuberant early work by British artist Jadé Fadojutimi. Burnished tones of red and orange sweep across the picture plane like fireworks against the night sky, punctuated by floating cells of blue, pink and purple that drift in hypnotic constellations. Oil and iridescent pigments shimmer across the canvas, creating a rich, hallucinogenic space. Drawing together influences ranging from contemporary Japanese subculture to painters such as Amy Sillman and Phoebe Unwin, Fadojutimi paints freely and intuitively, viewing the process as a means of digging deeper into her own identity and emotions. The approach has propelled her to rapid critical acclaim over the past few years: as well as becoming the youngest artist in the Tate collection in 2021, and featuring in the Hayward Gallery’s celebrated group exhibition Mixing It Up: Painting Today, she is currently the subject of her first major institutional solo show at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. She will exhibit at the Hepworth Wakefield this autumn.

 

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Large Paintings

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Untitled, 2022

Phillips New-York: 19 November 2025
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
PASSED

Jadé Fadojutimi Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale featuring Cera the Triceratops

JADE FADOJUTIMI
Untitled, 2022
Acrylic, oil and oil pastel on canvas
300×500 cm (118 1/8 x 196 7/8 inches)
Signed and dated “Jadé Fadojutimi Oct ’22 Jadé Fadojutimi” on the reverse

Jadé Fadojutimi’s Untitled, painted in 2022, unfolds as a lush, immersive field of color and movement that hovers between abstraction and landscape. Swaths of deep green and turquoise conjure water and dense vegetation, while tangled gestures in red, orange, and violet surge across the canvas like currents or undergrowth. Transparent layers of acrylic and oil pastel interlace to create shifting zones of depth and translucency, inviting the eye to wander and recalibrate. The result is a dynamic, almost aquatic environment where emotion and perception flow together in constant motion. Fadojutimi transforms the canvas into a terrain that probes identity, self-knowledge, and states of unresolved feeling. Brimming with her characteristic vibrancy, Untitled embodies the rhythmic, visually charged compositions that define her celebrated “emotional landscapes,” in which color, space, and form become conduits for memory and introspection. One of the most compelling painters of her generation, Fadojutimi continues to expand the expressive possibilities of abstraction, her mark-making alive with energy and sensation.

[Left] Claude Monet, Nymphéas, 1916-1919. Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris. Image: Artefact / Alamy Stock Photo
[Right] Willem de Kooning, Saturday Night, 1956. Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Saint Louis. Artwork: © 2025 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

The dynamism of Untitled stems from Fadojutimi’s distinctive technique. She thins her paint with Liquin, a fast-drying medium that yields a glossy, reflective surface reminiscent of glass or water. In recent years, the artist has increasingly drawn directly onto her canvases with oil pastel—a crayon-like medium that accommodates the speed and spontaneity of her process. Its introduction marked a turning point in Fadojutimi’s relationship to drawing. Where just a year prior to making the present work she described drawing as “an appetizer for painting,” oil pastel enabled her to blur the boundaries between the two disciplines. Described by the artist as “environments,” compositions such as Untitled are built up in layered strata, the soaring and scribbled lines of pastel functioning as interruptions—passages of discontinuity that channel fluid emotion and the pursuit of self-knowledge.

“Some people write a diary, I guess I draw a diary—the burst of energy, thoughts, or colors that are in my mind. In the studio, I tend to fill my walls with the drawings. And rather than using a drawing directly to start and finish a painting, I might extract elements from the drawing and let them intertwine into many works.” 

Untitled pulses with gesture and movement as loose, translucent washes collide with creamy, looping strokes of color. Fadojutimi builds thin layers of pigment through rhythmic caresses, then intuitively scrapes and scratches the surface to reveal a network of dancing grooves and sweeping arcs. The organic curvature of her lines recalls Julie Mehretu’s complex abstractions, while the painterly vigor of thick oils evokes the physicality of Action Painters such as Jackson Pollock, Joan Mitchell, and Willem de Kooning. Equally, the aqueous blue-green expanse along the lower register, punctuated by leaf-like notches and floating forms, summons Claude Monet’s late Water Lilies—their luxuriant color and luminous touch reimagined through a contemporary lens.

Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation Klamm [Improvisation Ravine], 1914. Lenbachhaus, Munich. Image: Municipal Gallery in the Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau Munich, Gabriele Münter Foundation 1957

“My paintings recognize a lack of self caused by automatically thinking that my identity is already defined, and also a frustration that paint can accept these characteristics better than myself.” 

The richly worked surface of Untitled thus becomes not only an exploration of light and form but also an intimate conversation about the self. Grounded in her environment and lived experience, each canvas encapsulates a facet of her evolving identity. Drawing from her upbringing in suburban London as a Black British woman of Nigerian heritage, Fadojutimi constructs layered pictorial worlds that mirror the complexity of personal growth.  Instead, they emerge as “emotionally charged, psychological landscapes” that mirror both the artist’s inner world and our own. Symphonic and deceptively precise, Untitled embodies this balance, unfolding as a dense, all-encompassing meditation on psychological complexity.

“What I love about painting is that it’s a discussion with ourselves. When you see a work you’re drawn to, there’s always a moment where you want to leave but you can’t… I want my canvases to be spaces where people maybe recognize themselves and think, ‘I see this, and that’s okay, but why do I see this? And what does that mean to me?’”

Inspired by experience, memory, and emotion, Fadojutimi’s compositions vibrate with dream-like energy. Her visual language extends beyond Western art history to embrace a wide constellation of influences, with Japan a particularly vital source. Artists such as Makiko Kudo and Yoshitomo Nara, as well as Japanese animation, soundtracks, and video games, inform her interest in constructing parallel worlds—both familiar and otherworldly—defined by sensitivity to transition and an embrace of the ephemeral.

“While I’m painting, the harmonious unity of my senses becomes apparent. They muddle together, chitter-chattering about their newfound warmth as though it’s their first connection.”

Color, too, serves as a bridge between her multiple identities and lived experience. Fadojutimi’s engagement with color is shaped by a form of synesthesia. For her, color is not merely aesthetic but linguistic—a means of articulating emotions that defy words. In Untitled, each hue corresponds to a state of being, evoking what Wassily Kandinsky described as the “inner sound” of color. Through this chromatic symbiosis, Fadojutimi’s practice approaches the spiritual, translating emotion into rhythm and resonance. For Fadojutimi, color always comes first.

 

 

Untitled, 2024

Christie’s London: 6 March 2025
Estimated: GBP 350,000 – 450,000
GBP 428,400 / USD 548,352

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993), Untitled | Christie’s

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
Untitled, 2024
Acrylic, oil pastel and oil bar on canvas
250 x 175 cm (98 3/8 x 68 7/8 inches)
Signed ‘Jadé Fadojutimi’ (on a label affixed to the stretcher)

Jadé Fadojutimi’s Untitled (2024) has been generously donated by the artist as part of BUILD IT, BEAT IT, a selection of artworks sold to raise funds towards the building of the Children’s Cancer Centre at Great Ormond Street Hospital. Two and a half metres tall and just under two metres wide, this radiant, enveloping canvas pulsates with chromatic fervor. Paint blooms across the surface of the canvas, as fluent swathes of periwinkle blue and teal mingle with warm washes of cadmium orange and magenta. The effect suggests a gently receding river valley, below piles of fluffy cumulus clouds caught in the glow of a setting sun. Oil-bar strokes evocative of butterflies’ wings or rugged natural formations provide a striking graphic foil to the profusion of broad, brushy strokes. Born in London in 1993, Fadojutimi has received extraordinary critical acclaim in recent years for paintings which hover between figuration and abstraction. A self-professed synesthete, the artist is particularly attuned to color and sound; each painting captures the fleeting impression of an indescribable emotional environment, specific to the moment of its making.

Joan Mitchell, Weeds, 1976. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. Artwork and photo: © Estate of Joan Mitchell.

Fadojutimi works quickly, with an urgency felt keenly in the present work’s vital, expressive brushstrokes, and without any prior conception of the final composition. Working intuitively, she draws from a plethora of visual sources, from Japanese anime—an obsession discovered in childhood upon watching Sailor Moon, a television adaptation of a popular manga series—to fashion, video games and plush soft toys. In her studio, an office hung with racks of brightly coloured and patterned clothes serves as visual inspiration for her paintings. She paints accompanied by a medley of fast dance and sweeping classical music, and soundtracks from her favorite films, interspersed with the patter of rain as it hits the corrugated-metal roof of her vast South East London studio. This soundscape infiltrates her work, each canvas punctuated by a sense of steady rhythm, as well as moments of crescendo and repose.

‘When I was really young I wanted to be a fashion designer. And my dream is to be a composer. So now I call myself a composer of color.”

Vincent van Gogh, Japonaiserie: Flowering Plum Orchard (after Hiroshige), 1887. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
Digital image: Van Gogh Museum.

While studying at London’s Slade School of Art and the Royal College of Art, Fadojutimi looked to the paintings of Claude Monet and Paul Cézanne, Joan Mitchell and Lee Krasner, adding a profound admiration for art history’s masters of color to her own deeply personal visual education. Her paintings display an adept command of materials, often layering paint, oil stick and pastel in a single canvas. She is particularly fond of Interference oil paint, made by New York-based brand Williamsburg, which changes color according to the slant of surrounding light, forming a pearlescent sheen across the surface of the canvas. In the present work, each rococo flourish of the artist’s brush is laden with paint applied wet on wet, forging a gently shimmering, animate patina suggestive of a softly glowing stained-glass window. It is with such evocative, alluring canvases that Fadojutimi conjures fantastic, phantasmagorical other worlds, and invites the viewer to join her within them.

Taught Thought, 2021

Sotheby’s New-York: 20 November 2024
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 780,000

Taught Thought | The Now and Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s

JADE FADOJUTIMI (b. 1993)
Taught Thought, 2021
Acrylic, oil and oilstick on canvas
200×300 cm (78 3/4 x 118 1/8 inches)
Signed, dated June ’21 and variously inscribed (on the reverse)

Overflowing with exuberant hues of pinks and energetic strokes of cobalt, orange, teal, and green, Jadé Fadojutimi’s Taught Thought of 2021 is an outstanding exemplar of the artist’s expressive painterly practice. Fadojutimi’s signature mark-making pulses dynamically across the present canvas, enlivening the picture plane with a chromatic intensity that oscillates between opacity and translucence. Fadojutimi transforms the canvas into a complex emotional landscape that explores themes of identity, self-knowledge, and unresolved emotion, all of which coalesce to underscore the fact that she is one of the most exciting painters of her generation. Indeed, testament to her artistic prowess, Fadojutimi has seen her works acquired by prestigious institutions including The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and Tate, London. She was also the subject of a highly acclaimed solo exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield in 2023 and a highlight of The Milk of Dreams exhibition at the Central Pavilion of the Venice Biennale in 2022.

Albert Oehlen, Ziggy Stargast, 2001. The Broad, Los Angeles. Art © 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / DACS, London

Taught Thought’s richly saturated canvas explodes with a shimmering wash of pinks and purples, evoking the mesmerizing ethereal glow of a violet sunset. Arched figures dance around in the foreground, suggesting the fluttering flight patterns of a butterfly or flower petals and tree leaves dancing in the air. Of course, these descriptions that invoke a natural landscape are masterfully captured in complete abstraction; in Taught Thought, Fadojutimi invites the viewer into a buzz of raw emotion.

“Though they’re purely abstract landscapes, there’s a dialogue with figuration within that too. I like to think of them as being on the spectrum between abstraction and figuration. I’d like to remain open for both myself and the viewers, who will have their own dialogue with them visually. This is when my title starts to play a role too.”

If we let the title Taught Thought guide our way in approaching the present work, perhaps one can imagine a stunning scenery appreciated, admired, and passed down from generation to generation, or our human preoccupation to find hints of figuration even in the most liberating of abstraction, in a desperate search for legible symbols to hold onto.

Fadojutimi’s lively and powerful canvas pulses with gesture and movement as loose translucent washes collide with thick blows of chalky pigment. This effect is the result of a meticulous yet spontaneous process: Fadojutimi builds up thin layers of pigment with rhythmic caresses, before intuitively scraping and scratching the painting’s luminous surface to leave a myriad of dancing grooves and sweeping strokes. The organic shapes of curvilinear lines remind the viewer of Julie Mehretu’s complex abstractions, while the buoyant strokes of thick oils recall the dynamic physicality associated with the abstraction of Jackson Pollock or Joan Mitchell and the vibrant usage of color seen in Wassily Kandinsky. The deep purple that occupies the bottom right-hand corner summons Monet’s late waterlilies and their rich and luxuriant color, along with his lush and luminous brushstrokes. Charged with energy and emotion, Taught Thought confidently occupies the liminal space between figurative and abstract with its looping swirls of blue, confetti of turquoise and orange, and emphatic streaks of red cascade into a nebulous flash of color and emotion.

Left: Wassily Kandinsky, Large Study, 1914. Museum Bojimans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Image © Raffaello Bencini / Bridgeman Images. Art © 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Right: Lee Krasner, Vernal Yellow, 1980. Museum Ludwig, Cologne. Image © bpk Bildagentur / Museum Ludwig / Art Resource, NY. Art © 2024 Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Fadojutimi writes of her paintings that they “recognize a lack of self caused by automatically thinking that my identity is already defined, and also a frustration that paint can accept these characteristics better than myself.” (the artist quoted in: Exh. Cat., London, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, Jadé Fadojutimi: Jesture, 2020 (online)) The richly worked surfaces of Fadojutimi’s canvasses are not only a rigorous interrogation of light and form but also an emotive conversation about the self. Perhaps it comes as no surprise that Fadojutimi’s work is grounded in her environment and experiences, and every canvas encapsulates her ever-changing self. Much like her layered paintings, she builds upon her own past, as she draws from her upbringing in suburban London or her Nigerian family. She also often cites Japanese anime soundtracks, video games, and Korean dramas as important sources of inspiration, and how they fuel the energy and dynamism of such cultures. Fadojutimi’s colors manifest themselves as a synesthesia of sorts, bridging her canvas with her identities and interests, mapping her multiple facets with vibrant brushstrokes.

Even an awkward smile can sprout beyond the sun, 2021

Phillips New-York: 19 November 2024
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 571,500

Jadé Fadojutimi – Modern & Contempor… Lot 8 November 2024 | Phillips

Painted in 2021, Even an awkward smile can sprout beyond the sun, encapsulates the emotional intensity, spontaneity, and complexity that define Jadé Fadojutimi’s artistic practice. Exhibited at the Liverpool Biennial in 2021, this work was part of a carefully curated selection of Fadojutimi’s large-scale paintings spanning distinct stages of her practice over a period of 5 years, offering a unique opportunity to witness the evolution of her visual language. In an interview with Studio International Magazine earlier that same year, Fadojutimi spoke to the inclusion of this work, which was then one of her most recent, describing it as “the youngest and most visually intense painting in the show,” and calling it “a complex gush of color” that she was excited to witness in discussion with the rest of her selection.

Fadojutimi’s process is deeply intuitive. Often completed in a single session where her physical interaction with the canvas becomes a dance, her paintings embody the energy of Abstract Expressionism while maintaining a distinctly contemporary edge. Her approach, described as “orchestrating randomness,”is evident in the layers of vibrant color and gestural brushstrokes that characterize Even an awkward smile can sprout beyond the sun. The present work can be understood as a visual manifestation of her internal dialogue—a conversation between her emotional state, memories, and the influences of her environment.

Fadojutimi often describes her studio as “setting the stage for painting,” where the physical environment deeply influences her creative process. The objects in her space, along with the ideas they inspire, subtly manifest in her works—not as direct representations, but through abstract elements such as energy, color, texture, and pattern. She views these compositions as their own kind of “environments,” where the influence of the studio’s surroundings becomes intertwined with the painted surface. These complex works, neither wholly abstract nor figurative, are built up with layers of oil paint and interrupted by linear mark-making enabled by the introduction of oil bars into her practice. This new medium allowed Fadojutimi to expand her exploration of palette, composition, and depth, translating the spontaneity of her drawing into the evolving environment of the painting itself. The title, Even an awkward smile can sprout beyond the sun, reflects Fadojutimi’s engagement with language as an extension of her painting.

“I write alongside my practice. A lot of the language within my titles comes from the things I’m writing. I like to play with language as well in a way that responds to the reality that I’m experiencing.”

Her titles function as reflective and poetic extensions of her artistic process, deeply intertwined with her personal experiences and emotions. They capture moments of introspection—what she calls “a reflection of [herself] at that moment”—and invite viewers to explore the nuanced, often abstract, relationships between the visual and conceptual elements within her paintings. Rather than mere descriptors, her titles add a layer of meaning that disrupts conventional expectations, much like the way her paintings oscillate between figuration and abstraction.

Joan Mitchell, Wood, Wind, No Tuba, 1979, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Image: © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY, Artwork: © Joan Mitchell Estate

In the present example, the title suggests a narrative of growth and resilience, where even something as hesitant as an “awkward smile” has the potential to grow and thrive (“sprout beyond the sun”). Visually, the painting reflects this idea through its tangled, yet vibrant composition. The sweeping lines and interwoven forms might symbolize the complexity of emotions or experiences that, despite their initial awkwardness, contribute to a larger, more beautiful whole. The colors themselves seem to sprout and spread across the canvas, echoing the title’s theme of growth and the emergence of something beyond initial expectations. Fadojutimi’s paintings are autobiographical in a sense, rooted in her experiences and obsessions, yet they transcend mere personal narrative to engage with broader themes of identity and self-discovery. In Even an awkward smile can sprout beyond the sun, the layers of oil, oil bar, and acrylic converge to create an immersive environment where forms on the brink of recognition dissolve into abstraction. This tension between the identifiable and the abstract is central to Fadojutimi’s work, reflecting her belief that identity is not a fixed construct but a fluid, ever-evolving conversation.

The Woven Warped Garden of Ponder, 2021

Christie’s London: 7 March 2024
Estimated: GBP 400,000 – 600,000
GBP 1,552,500 / USD 1,968,570

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993), The Woven Warped Garden of Ponder | Christie’s (christies.com)

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
The Woven Warped Garden of Ponder, 2021
Acrylic and oil on canvas
200×300 cm (78 7/8 x 118 1/4 inches)
Signed, initialed, titled and dated ‘Jadé Fadojutimi JF Oct ’21 ‘The Woven Warped Garden of Ponder” (on the reverse)

Included in Jadé Fadojutimi’s landmark exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Miami in 2021—her solo museum debut—The Woven Warped Garden of Ponder is an exquisite painting dating from a pivotal moment in her career. A kaleidoscopic spectrum of blue and green tones shimmers across the three-meter-wide canvas, flickering from teal, violet and aquamarine to jade, eau de nil and pale yellow.

Vibrant flashes of pink, red and orange gleam through the texture; light and shadow undulate across the surface. Using both oil and acrylic, Fadojutimi oscillates between rich, sweeping gestures, rapid linear strokes and translucent dabs of colour. It is dazzling spectacle, calling to mind a vision of flowers and foliage seen through a stained glass window. In a recent interview, Melanie Vandenbrouck, Chief Curator at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, singled it out as her favourite painting. It is fresh, vibrant and intoxicating, capturing the moment that Fadojutimi began to take her place on the international stage.

Jadé Fadojutimi with the present lot in her studio, London. Photograph by Rick Pushinsky. Artwork: © Jadé Fadojutimi.

Born and raised in London, Fadojutimi studied at the Slade School of Art and the Royal College of Art. She has risen to extraordinary critical acclaim over the past seven years: in 2021 she became the youngest artist to enter the Tate’s collection, and made her Venice Biennale debut the following year. Though her paintings sing with life, movement and energy, Fadojutimi’s process is one of quiet, deeply personal contemplation. As a child, she developed a powerful love of color, informed by eclectic interests in fashion, Japanese anime and video games. The lessons of art history did not feature heavily during her youth, and her understanding of tone, space and pattern was cultivated from first principles. In her studio, Fadojutimi seeks to recreate the sanctity of her childhood bedroom, surrounding herself with clothes, old soft toys and fragments of her own writings. Frequently working late at night, she pays close attention to her innermost thoughts and feelings, allowing them to guide her hand intuitively across the canvas. She draws much of her inspiration from the natural world, describing her paintings as ‘environments’ that she builds up through complex techniques of gridding and layering.

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Smaller Paintings

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Perhaps this is also a current pattern of life, 2020

Phillips London: 26 June 2025
Estimated: GBP 200,000 – 250,000
GBP 152,400 / USD 208,635

Jadé Fadojutimi Modern & Contemporary Art: Evening & Day Sale

In Perhaps this is also a current pattern of life, Jadé Fadojutimi weaves together gesture, form and color to create a work that wavers between structure and freedom. Executed in 2020, the painting exemplifies her signature visual lexicon—an arresting interplay of gestural mark-making and cascading forms. With its dense matrix of colored shapes and spontaneous marks, the work occupies the liminal space between figuration and abstraction, a reflection not only of Fadojutimi’s intuitive process but of the ever-shifting terrain of identity she so often mines. Blue horizontal lines intersect lattice-like with orange-red verticals which quiver on the canvas; this structural framework is unusual in the artist’s oeuvre yet powerfully accentuates the delicate passages of green, yellow, magenta and white that sit in the background. With swooping curves criss-crossing jagged edges and colours clashing and congealing, Perhaps this is also a current pattern of life stands as an electrifying example of Fadojutimi’s dynamic practice.

Left: Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation No. 30 (Cannons), 1913, Art Institute of Chicago. Image: Art Institute of Chicago, Arthur Jerome Eddy Memorial Collection, 1931.511
Right: Paul Klee, Mountain Village (Autumnal), 1934, Galerie Rosengart, Lucerne. Image: Bridgeman Images

Charged with energy and emotion, Fadojutimi’s paintings are grounded in her environment and experiences, and every canvas is an encapsulation of her ever-changing self. She describes her work as a diary of her life, transposing the visual and emotional stimulus from her everyday onto the canvas.

“I think we can translate a lot of moods into color, and see it literally, too. I’ve been thinking about a lot of what it means to talk about identity, or question it.”

Fluidly connected to art historical tradition, the present work recalls the structured patchwork abstraction of Paul Klee; similarly, Fadojutimi’s instinctive handling of different hues to create depth and form echoes Wassily Kandinsky’s carefully layered washes of colur. The artist also cites Japanese fashion, manga and anime soundtracks as important sources of inspiration, and this fascination manifests itself in an abundance of color and freneticism.

“Painting is a sensory experience, so it’s hard to really describe the decisions I make along the way because it’s all about pleasure, which is subjective. But I spoil myself when I’m painting. I completely bathe in the conversations between color, texture, line, form, composition, rhythm, marks and disturbances that allow me to gush […] Those gushing moments are the essence of my decision-making. They are the mood of that moment captured as an event and celebrated.”

This intense sensitivity to the moment and the point of creation informs every mark on the canvas, every gesture of pigment. Painting alla prima, Fadojutimi manipulates oil, acrylic and oilstick across the surface while still wet to create her fluid, multilayered and vibrant compositions. In the present work, forms emerge gradually, at once disperse and clumped, demanding a slow kind of looking that reflects the essential nature of Fadojutimi’s painterly practice. As with her best works, opacity and transparency coalesce and diverge across the canvas, perspective collapses and distinctions between object and space are blurred. What remains is a dissolving matrix of ambiguous gesture and vibrating color, a map to her emotional landscape.

Left: Joan Mitchell, City Landscape, 1955, Art Institute of Chicago. Image/Artwork: © Joan Mitchell Estate
Right: Cy Twombly, Gaeta Set (for the Love of Fire and Water), 1981, Museum Brandhorst, Munich. Image: Photo Scala, Florence/bpk, Bildagentur fuer Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Berlin, Artwork: © Cy Twombly Foundation 

Her singular approach to abstraction, as exemplified by Perhaps this is also a current pattern of life, is testament to the artist’s capacity to push the boundaries of her chosen media and reinvent the tenets of contemporary painting. Testament to their importance, her paintings are held in the permanent collections of prestigious museums including The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; The Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis; and The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, and when just 29 years old, Fadojutimi became the youngest artist in the collection of Tate, London, with her painting I Present Your Royal Highness (2018).

She’s Distressed, 2019

Christie’s London: 27 June 2024
Estimated: GBP 250,000 – 350,000
GBP 277,200 / USD 351,490

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993) (christies.com)

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
She’s Distressed, 2019
Oil on canvas
175.5 x 165.5 cm (69 1/8 x 65 1/8 inches)
Signed twice and dated ‘Jadé Fadojutimi March ’19’ (on the reverse)

With its sparks, flurries and ribbons of color tangling in a space of clear sunlit yellow, She’s Distressed (2019) is a radiant example of Jadé Fadojutimi’s abstract practice. Slender, marbled strokes, glowing through a spectrum of complementary purple and golden tones, weave and dance around the picture’s luminous core, while elongated shapes—speckled like cells under a microscope—float weightlessly in the foreground. The work captures the distinctly personal language that has propelled Fadojutimi to international acclaim in recent years. Experiencing moods as colors, she has described her works as ‘windows to the self’ and ‘emotive environments,’ building them up in glowing, translucent layers that interface with her own feelings, memories and experiences. Her intuitive, organic process can be richly felt in the present work, whose forms seem to grow, branch and flutter by their own volition.

During her time at art school Fadojutimi came to admire other artists, ranging from Joan Mitchell, Claude Monet, Lee Krasner and Henri Matisse to contemporary painters including Phoebe Unwin, Laura Owens and Amy Sillman. Many of these figures share something of her synaesthetic approach to the canvas, with sound, touch, speed and other phenomena informing their handling of pigment.

“Whilst I’m painting, the harmonious unity of my senses becomes apparent. They muddle together, chitter-chattering about their newfound warmth as though it’s their first connection. This first meeting seems to happen almost every day.”

Fadojutimi writes in parallel with her painting, and her works’ oblique, poetic titles reflect their sense of play, experimentation and flux. If She’s Distressed alludes to any emotive turmoil in its excited upheaval of forms, it is also many things at once: an ever-changing inner landscape expressed through her miraculous, self-defining language of color.

The Luxury of Single Cell Organisms, 2019

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 529,200

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993), The Luxury of Single Cell Organisms | Christie’s (christies.com)

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
The Luxury of Single Cell Organisms, 2019
Oil on canvas
160×220 cm (63 x 86 5/8 inches)
Signed twice, titled and dated ‘Dec ’19 ‘The Luxury of Single Cell Organisms Jadé Fadojutimi JF’ (on the reverse)

For Fadojutimi, painting is intense, both physically and emotionally. Her studio environment – which sometimes includes her childhood soft toys – is arranged so that she can get into the deep state of introspection she needs to paint, thinking about her school and early life, history, or how she feels about what’s happening in the world. Then she dances and runs at the canvas, scales ladders, cries, and sometimes breaks off to write in her diary. The title of the work will often come to her halfway through. She works on her own, through the night, with her favourite soundtracks blasting out, and sometimes she can finish a painting in a single night if she feels gripped. “It becomes a force that just takes over,” she says. “I always want to call it witchcraft.” Then, in the morning, she goes home to bed and her assistants come to get the studio ready so she can start again.

Joan Mitchell, City Landscape, 1955. Art Institute of Chicago. © Estate of Joan Mitchell.

The Pour, 2022

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 1,079,500

Jadé Fadojutimi – Modern & Contemporary A… Lot 8 May 2024 | Phillips

Jadé Fadojutimi’s The Pour, painted in 2022, is a glistening mosaic of gem-like hues: vivid magentas, coral reds, royal purples, and hints of turquoise that traverse the canvas in a richly choreographed dance. A central semicircle motif seems to evoke the “pouring” action that the title alludes to, while patterns reminiscent of leaves and greenery erupt in growth along the margins. Somewhere between figuration and abstraction, one can almost make out faces peeking through the frenetic brushstrokes and sunset-hued washes. Brimming with Fadojutimi’s characteristic vibrancy, The Pour envelopes its viewer into the artist’s exuberant and precious world. As the artist elucidates, through “form, color, or texture or pattern […] they become spaces for me to exist.”

Gustav Klimt, Bauerngarten, 1907. Private Collection.

The dynamism and sense of quick movement in The Pour is a result of Fadojutimi’s unique painting technique. The artist thins her paint with the quick drying agent Liquin, which dries fast and to a high gloss, giving the effect of a reflection on glass or water. In her more recent paintings, and in this work in particular, she draws directly onto the canvas with oil bar, a medium that accommodates both the speed and spontaneity of her painting process. The introduction of the oilstick to her practice represented a new relationship with drawing for the artist. While she previously described drawing as “an appetizer for painting,” the oilstick represents for her a hybrid between the two and is a testament to her dedication to fading the boundaries between painting and drawing. For Fadojutimi, it is important that her medium keep up with her fast-paced artistic process; having stated that she is most productive in the evening, Fadojutimi often completes her works in late-night bursts of creativity. Dancing and running about her studio, the artist will even pause to write in her diary; writing, for her, is as intrinsic to her practice as mark-making, which is reflected in her poetic and narrative titles. The Pour – both vague enough to be generative, and specific enough to find resonance in the visuals of the work – emblematizes her mastery of titling.

Lee Krasner, Desert Moon, 1955. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Image: © 2024 Museum Associates / LACMA. Licensed by Art Resource, NY, Artwork: © 2024 Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Fadojutimi’s rich canvases draw inspiration from myriad sources, the country of Japan being paramount: Japanese artists such as Makiko Kudo and Yoshitomo Nara serve as great influences to her, as well as Japanese animation; she even completed a residency in Japan in 2016. As a reminder of her childhood, she will often put on anime or video game soundtracks as she works. In the Western art historical canon, Fadojutimi’s work has been compared to abstract expressionists such as Joan Mitchell and Lee Krasner, whose energized, rhythmic marks and high impact color schemes seem to find a modern-day equivalent in the British artist’s practice. In response to Krasner’s 2019 exhibition Living Colour, the Fadojutimi admitted her envy of Krasner’s use of color, adding that, for herself, “Color is an invitation to someone’s eyes, and how they see life and pleasure or even the opposite of that.” For Fadojutimi, color always comes first. 2022, the year that The Pour was painted, was a notable year for the artist; new paintings by Fadojutimi were on display in the Central Pavilion of the Venice Biennale, which followed her first US solo museum exhibition at ICA Miami, Yet, Another Pathetic Fallacy. The Hepworth Wakefield also displayed a solo exhibition by the artist that year, titled Can We See the Colour Green Because We Have a Name for It? At age twenty-eight in 2018, Fadojutimi was the youngest artist to have her work collected by the Tate Modern, and since then her trajectory has been one to watch as she establishes herself as one of the most compelling new voices in abstract painting. Created at a high point of her continually ascending career, The Pour is a striking meditation on color, life and growth. Thrumming with energy, Fadojutimi pours herself into this work; as she has said, “a self-portrait is not always the depiction of a face.”

(Hip) like a kaleidoscope (po), 2021

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 698,500

(Hip) like a kaleidoscope (po) | The Now Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JADE FADOJUTIMI (b. 1993)
(Hip) like a kaleidoscope (po), 2021
Oil, oilstick and acrylic on canvas
170×200 cm (66 7/8 x 78 5/8 inches)
Signed, dated March ’21 and variously inscribed (on the reverse)

Brimming with frenetic, lyrical energy and prismatic color, Jadé Fadojutimi’s (Hip) like a kaleidoscope (po) from 2021 evokes a powerful send of joy, situating itself prominently within the artist’s commanding oeuvre. Atop a base of thinly applied tangerine brush strokes, Fadojutimi engulfs her canvas with a plethora of abstract figures, incorporating undulating stripes, multicolored splotches, and piquantly scraped dots of different blues. Rounded forms of pink, yellow, and green confidently announce themselves within the unrestrained color field, recalling naturalistic tulip bulbs or plump summer fruit. With the dynamic energy of Action Painting, the present work presents a dynamic medley of oil, oil stick, and acrylic, recalling the renowned mark-making practices of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Joan Mitchell as well as their propensity for working with large-scale canvases that defined their Abstract Expressionist vigor. Represented globally by Gagosian, Fadojutimi’s paintings were a highlight of The Milk of Dreams exhibition at the Central Pavilion of the Venice Biennale in 2022. Most recently, Fadojutumi was the subject of an acclaimed solo exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield which closed in March 2023, while her paintings reside in several prestigious museum collections, including The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Tate, London.

DAVID HOCKNEY, MULHOLLAND DRIVE: THE ROAD TO THE STUDIO, 1980. IMAGE © LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART. ART © 2024 DAVID HOCKNEY

While (Hip) like a kaleidoscope (po) has only shocks of green within its multichromatic make-up, it undeniably recalls a fluttering, effervescent garden. Flower petals appear to dance in the wind, leaves and blossoms interconnect, butterflies bring movement, and the enrapturing buzz of hummingbirds provides an ambiance of pristine, unchangeable serenity. The previous Edenic description is, of course, painted masterfully in complete abstraction – in (Hip) like a kaleidoscope (po) Fadojutimi quietly brings us into her world, then stupefies us with a sanguine intensity. As the artist describes, “Though they’re purely abstract landscapes, there’s a dialogue with figuration within that too. I like to think of them as being on the spectrum between abstraction and figuration. I’d like them to remain open for both myself and the viewers, who will have their own dialogue with them visually. This is when my title starts to play a role too.” (Jadé Fadojutimi quoted in: Nicholas Trembley, ‘Who is Jadé Fadojutimi, young painter already represented by mega-gallery Gagosian?’, Numéro, 2023, (online)) With the title as context for the present work, one can easily imagine this Arcadian garden as viewed through the lens of a variegated kaleidoscope.

The act of layering paint is a hallmark of Fadojutimi’s process: through poetic mark-making, the artist builds up coats of pigment with rhythmic caresses, before intuitively scraping and scratching the canvas’s exacting surface to reveal a myriad of undulating grooves and sweeping strokes. This process well encapsulates her lovingly befitting moniker for these paintings – “emotional landscapes.” As Fadjotumi explains, her paintings “question the existence of feelings and reactions to daily experiences. They question our perceptions and perspectives whilst manifesting struggles. They recognize a lack of self caused by automatically thinking that my identity is already defined, and also a frustration that paint can accept these characteristics better than myself.” (the artist quoted in: Exh. Cat., London, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, Jadé Fadojutimi: Jesture, 2020 (online)) Fadojutimi takes inspiration from both internal and external sources, melding her experiences together to create her strident, intrepid canvases.

“What I love about painting is that it’s a discussion with ourselves. When you see a work you’re drawn to, there’s always a moment where you want to leave but you can’t…I want my canvases to be spaces where people maybe recognize themselves and think, ‘I see this, and that’s okay, but why do I see this? And what does that mean to me?’” 

Much like her layered paintings, she builds upon her own past, as she draws from her upbringing in suburban London, her Nigerian family, her interest in Japanese culture and video games. The result is powerful works of art that reflect a precise moment in time, full of unique – but ultimately universal – emotions.  Fadojutimi exceeds her painterly goals – the vibrant work commands our attention, immersing us in a wholly abstract realm that speaks to the artist’s inimitable painterly process.

Fishing For Steps, 2017

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 April 2024
Estimated: HKD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
HKD 1,841,500 / USD 235,426

Jadé Fadojutimi 賈黛・法多朱蒂米 | Fishing For Steps 足跡的探尋 | The Now Evening Auction | Contemporary Art | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JADE FADOJUTIMI (b. 1993)
Fishing For Steps, 2017
Oil on canvas
100.5 x 145 cm (39 5/8 x 57 1/8 inches)
Signed, titled and dated 2017 on the reverse

A rhapsody of color in hues of lavender blue, moss green and canary yellow, the mesmerizing Fishing For Steps exemplifies the dynamism and vibrancy for which Jadé Fadojutimi has become critically acclaimed. Painted during the final year of her MA program at the Royal College of Art, Fishing For Steps sees luscious strokes of pigment converge and coalesce is an explosive iteration of the artist’s intuitive practice. Embracing chance and chaos, Fadojutimi transforms the canvas into a complex emotional landscape which explores themes of identity, self-knowledge and unresolved emotion. Before Fadojutimi saw her thirtieth birthday she became the youngest artist in the collection of the Tate, London, which features her explosive painting, I Present Your Royal Highness (2018), with examples of her work now residing in prestigious museum collections, including The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore; and The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, amongst others.

A mesmerizing landmark from her artistic journey, the richly saturated canvas of Fishing For Steps pulses with gesture and movement as loose, translucent washes collide with thick blows of impasto. Culminating in a vivacious symphony of color, Fadojutimi’s lively and powerful mark making dances across the canvas in a dynamism that recalls the work of Jackson Pollock or Joan Mitchell. Building up thin layers of pigment with rhythmic caresses before intuitively scraping and scratching the painting’s luminous surface, Fadojutimi is able to give her compositions a sense of unbridled velocity. Shimmering washes of yellow and blue evoke the ethereal light of stained glass windows or early morning sunlight, while buoyant strokes of deep green recall the earthy shades found in nature. Colors and shapes bloom and recede, with the darkest shades being punctuated by jolts of red, creating a view to another world that is both disparate and analogous to ours, communicating truth and emotion through her spontaneous aesthetic.

Known for her color-saturated compositions, Fadojutimi’s gestural application of color flows between abstraction and figuration to conjure a host of different moods and sensations. Fishing For Steps feels at once familiar and unfamiliar, invoking flashes of naturalistic imagery and alien landscapes in its obscured invocation of reality, our perception of the work forced to twist and bend with each stroke. Exploring notions of identity, emotion, imagination and play, Fadojutimi’s work bursts with pulsating dynamism, her exuberant brushwork recalling images of wild gardens and expansive seas. Fishing For Steps exhibits Fadojutimi’s exquisite technique, one highly resolved for an artist so young in her career. Fadojutimi is a Londoner through and through; born in 1993, she graduated from the Slade School of Art in 2015 and received her MA from the Royal College of Art, where she won the Hine Painting Prize, in 2017. Though her background is British Nigerian, Fadojutimi cites Japan as the culture that catalyzed her artistic style and continues to inspire her. She was a huge fan of Anime as a child, which she says helped her find an outlet for her own intense emotions, with the artist now visiting Japan multiple times a year for inspiration. Fadojutimi is said to work late into the night in her studio in South London listening to soundtracks from Japanese anime films, video games, and Korean dramas. Her compositions pulsate with the energy and dynamism of such animations, her gestural abstraction and vibrant use of color evoking a dream-like climax of cinematic drama. Fadojutimi’s singular approach to abstraction marks a testament to the artist’s capacity to push boundaries and reinvent the tenets of contemporary painting, placing her as one of the most exciting painters working today.

A Sheltered Overthought, 2019

Sotheby’s London: 6 March 2024
Estimated: GBP 300,000 – 400,000
GBP 508,000 / USD 644,144

A Sheltered Overthought | Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction featuring The Now | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JADE FADOJUTIMI (b. 1993)
A Sheltered Overthought, 2019
Oil on canvas
175 x 165.2 cm (69×65 inches)
Signed twice and dated April ’19 (on the reverse)

One of the most exciting painters working today, Jadé Fadojutimi has continued to stretch the expressive potential of painting as a medium. Her singular approach to abstraction is fully embodied by A Sheltered Overthought, a monumental example of her celebrated corpus which pulses dynamically with her signature mark-making. Executed primarily in vibrant, haphazard washes of purple and brown, the canvas is enlivened by vivid gestural moments of scarlet, turquoise and blue which are layered dynamically throughout the composition. Lines looping and straight interlock, creating a surface that tremors with chromatic intensity and oscillates between opacity and translucency in a manner familiar from her best paintings. Notably, however, A Sheltered Overthought transcends this tension through the artist’s use of a glossy paint: the result is a pearlescent composition that glimmers and shimmers in the light, further increasing its visual power. Typifying her charged and complex “emotional landscapes,” A Sheltered Overthought stands as a supreme example of Fadojutimi’s continued exploration of painting as an expressive medium to reflect on identity, movement and form.

As Fadojutimi explains, her paintings “question the existence of feelings and reactions to daily experiences. They question our perceptions and perspectives whilst manifesting struggles. They recognise a lack of self caused by automatically thinking that my identity is already defined, and also a frustration that paint can accept these characteristics better than myself” (Jadé Fadojutimi quoted in: Exh. Cat., London, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, Jadé Fadojutimi: Jesture, 2020, online). There is a lyricism to the present work that manifests itself in ambiguous forms that move between abstraction and figuration, simultaneously coalescing and rupturing across the richly worked surface of the canvas. Almost organic shapes appear across the composition, reminiscent of Julie Mehretu’s complex abstractions, while the two umbrella-like shapes near the upper edge of the canvas gesture towards the energy of Futurism and Rayonism. Distinctions between object and space are blurred, and what remains is a dissolving matrix of light rays and energy vectors. In turn, her use of purple, an historically exclusive colour, recalls Monet’s luxuriant late waterlilies.

LEFT: CLAUDE MONET, NYMPHEAS, 1916-19 / MUSÉE MARMOTTAN MONET, PARIS / IMAGE: © BRIDGEMAN IMAGES
RIGHT: UMBERTO BOCCIONI, THE FORCES OF A ROAD, 1911 / OSAKA CITY MUSEUM, JAPAN / PHOTO © FINE ART IMAGES / BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

This fluid relationship with painting tradition is a hallmark of Fadojutimi’s contemporary practice. Indeed, as chief curator of the Hepworth Wakefield, Andrew Bonacina, notes: “As paintings by a Black female artist made as part of a journey of self-understanding, Jadé’s work resonates with the heightened identity politics of the current moment, but it isn’t defined by these concerns. They are emotionally charged, psychological landscapes that mirror Jadé’s own inner thoughts and emotions but can also reflect our own. Their power is in their abstraction and porousness to a range of ideas and emotions” (Andrew Bonacina quoted in: Alex Needham, “Jadé Fadojutimi Colors Outside the Lines,” W Magazine, 30 November 2021, online). Symphonic and deceptively precise, A Sheltered Overthought revels in the artist’s sensitivity to space and form, becoming a dense, all-encompassing depiction of psychological complexity.

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI AT HER STUDIO IN LONDON, 2022 / PHOTO: © DAVID LEVENE/EYEVINE/REDUX / ART: © JADÉ FADOJUTIMI

Fadojutimi’s emotional and emotive connection with color is motivated by a kind of synesthesia: as she has stated, “when I feel emotion, I see a color and that’s how my paintings come to life” (Jadé Fadojutimi quoted in: Alex Needham, “’Painting takes me over – like witchcraft’: Jadé Fadojutimi, art’s hottest property,” The Guardian, 7 September 2022, online). Her self-proclaimed influences are telling in their variety: Monet, Mitchell, Makiko Kudo and Japanese anime. She is not defined by her upbringing as a Black British woman of Nigerian heritage, but rather seeks to mine multiple facets of her own identity, mapping with paint the social and cultural elements that frame her emotive environment. Now represented globally by Gagosian, Fadojutimi’s paintings were a highlight of The Milk of Dreams exhibition at the Central Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2022. Most recently, Fadojutumi was the subject of an acclaimed solo exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield which closed in March 2023 as well as a solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, which closed in April 2022. Fadojutimi’s paintings reside in prestigious museum collections, including The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, The Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, and The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, and at just 31 years old, Fadojutimi is the youngest artist in the collection of Tate, London, with her painting I Present Your Royal Highness (2018).

Cradled, 2018

Sotheby’s London: 12 October 2023
Estimated: GBP 400,000 – 600,000
GBP 495,300 / USD 604,835

Cradled | The Now Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JADE FADOJUTIMI (b. 1993)
Cradled, 2018
Oil on canvas
181.3 x 170.5 cm (71 3/8 x 67 1/8 inches)
Signed twice and dated Jan ’18 (on the reverse)

Bursting with exuberant hues of blues, Cradled is an electrifying example of Jadé Fadojutimi’s dynamic painterly practice. Luscious strokes of indigo and teal coalesce with passages of vivid emerald and violet, creating a luminous sea of vibrant colors. Embracing chance and chaos, Fadojutimi’s intuitive practice transforms the canvas into a complex, emotional landscape.

Fadojutimi’s lively and powerful mark making culminates in a symphony of colours which dance across the canvas in a vivacious celebration of paint. The richly saturated canvas pulses with gesture and movement as loose translucent washes collide with thick blows of impasto. Fadojutimi builds up thin layers of pigment with rhythmic caresses, before intuitively scraping and scratching the painting’s luminous surface to leave a myriad of dancing grooves and sweeping strokes. Shimmering washes of blues and greens evoke the ethereal light of stained-glass windows, while the buoyant strokes of thick oils recall the dynamic physicality associated with the abstraction of Jackson Pollock or Joan Mitchell. Amidst the myriad of gestural strokes, notes of figuration punctuate the composition. Charged with energy and emotion, Fadojutimi’s work is grounded in her environment and experiences, and every canvas is an encapsulation of her ever-changing self. She describes her work as a diary of her life, transposing the visual and emotional stimulus from her everyday onto the canvas. The artist also cites Japanese fashion, manga and anime soundtrack as important sources of inspiration, and this fascination manifests itself in an abundance of color and freneticism. As looping swirls cascade into nebulous streaks of blues, and confetti of orange flutter across the canvas, Cradled occupies a liminal space between a spectrum of figurative and abstract

Debris is welcome in this stream of thought, 2021

Phillips Hong-Kong: 6 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 4,000,000 – 7,000,000
HKD 3,556,000 / USD 454,057

Jadé Fadojutimi – 20th Century & Cont… Lot 5 October 2023 | Phillips

In the present work Debris is welcome in this stream of thought, one can recognize a heart shape with a music note in the center. This is perhaps inspired by her love of playing Japanese anime and gaming soundtracks while working in the studio. Your Lie in April  and Ori and the Blind Forest are constantly on repeat. Fadojutimi recalls that she has been fascinated with anime since a young age, and, in 2016, a Kyoto residency working with the Japanese subcultures and artist Makiko Kudo truly set off her career. She still sometimes visits Japan several times a year, and, for Fadojutimi, anime reminds her how ‘every moment in our life can be dramatic.’ ⁱ As a result, her canvas reflects her internal and external worlds, serving as a visual representation of her emotional and experiential landscape. Fused with primary colors of red, blue, and yellow, Debris is welcome in this stream of thought is an exuberant piece that radiates an optimistic and liberating energy.

 “We are all colours that are constantly fluctuating, we change every day, we change every minute, and it was a wonderful thing to think about in terms of why these paintings feel so different to me all the time, because I am constantly changing, and the colours I am experiencing are constantly changing.”

Debris is welcome in this stream of thought was featured in the exhibition Infinite Games… 2 at Capitain Petzel gallery in Berlin in 2021. Fadojutimi’s work invites viewers to engage with the complexity of identity and the fluidity of emotion, offering a deeply personal yet universally relatable exploration of the human condition.

Jadé Fadojutimi is known for her ability to express a sense of instinctive movement and spontaneity in her work, creating an unstrained and gushing visual experience for the viewer. Fadojutimi works intuitively; the artist almost never decides what colours to use, how to mix them, or envisions the painting beforehand. Fadojutimi has learned to allow the painting to take her on a journey and manifest itself, giving up her own will. To fully let the materials, colours and lines move freely and speak for themselves on the canvas, Fadojutimi started to adopt a new painting technique using oil sticks in recent years. Oil stick is a medium which accommodates and supports both speed and spontaneity for a dynamic composition. In Debris is welcome in this stream of thought, Fadojutimi enables the strokes to move rapidly across the canvas, revealing subtle figurative elements and articulating an impression of excitement.

A Toast to…?, 2020

Sotheby’s New-York: 18 May 2023
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 952,500

A Toast to…? | The Now Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JADE FADOJUTIMI (b. 1993)
A Toast to…?, 2020
Oil and oil stick on canvas
190×220 cm (74 3/4 x 86 5/8 inches)
Signed, titled and dated July ’20 (on the reverse)

A symphony of vibrant hues, A Toast to… is an electrifying example of Jadé Fadojutimi’s dynamic and intuitive visual practice, which embraces chance and chaos via exuberant, painterly abstraction. Through color and form alone, Fadojutimi evokes compelling, complex feelings and emotions in the viewer, reflective of her own emotions at the time of working. Swathes of seemingly translucent pink, blue, yellow, and green in A Toast to… coalesce in multifarious layers with luminous light and energy to create a visually charged landscape porous to a range of complex ideas and emotions. Fadojutimi’s paintings reside in prestigious museum collections including The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, The Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, and The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, and at just 29 years old, Fadojutimi is the youngest artist in the collection of Tate, London. Now represented globally by Gagosian, Fadojutimi’s recent paintings were a highlight of The Milk of Dreams exhibition at the Central Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2022.

Gushing and exploding hues are given center stage on the surface of the canvas. Through lyrical mark-making, Fadojutimi beautifully builds up thin layers of pigment with rhythmic caresses, before intuitively scraping and scratching the painting’s luminous surface to leave a myriad of dancing grooves and sweeping strokes in her wake. The painting bursts with frenetic movement and gesture, as loose sequences of thick brushwork collide with vigorously worked passages. The richly saturated, all-encompassing composition pulses with energy, merging knotted lines and swathes of color to form illuminated layers that echo the aesthetics of stained glass and recall the same sense of entranced absorption associated with Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning. There is a buoyancy to Fadojutimi’s brushwork, her markings communicating her connection to memory with figurative punctuations.

A Declaration of War, 2018

Bonhams New-York: 18 May 2023
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 932,775

Bonhams : JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993) A Declaration of War 2018

Jadé Fadojutimi’s paintings are orchestral feats of gestural abstraction. The surface is never static. The pigment is a translucent film through which we glimpse the riddled underbelly of the composition. When standing in front of A Declaration of War it is hard not to feel the painting coming ever-forward, encroaching on your field of vision with each swath and strike of the paint by brushes and fingers that render lines with a silky glide. She is surely one of the most talented painters of her generation and A Declaration of War a fervid masterpiece – one of the finest examples to come to market. A Declaration of War is a testament to the maturity and versatility of Fadojutimi’s talent. Compositionally, she strikes an unfaltering balance between energy, detail, line, and the more intentionally drawn passages of mark-making that wrest natural forms from the pictorial field. Few painters can do this: to implement gesture and forcefulness without being contrived nor undermining the imagistic integrity of the work. Cecily Brown can do this. Joan Mitchell practically invented this. With its roots in the Impressionist school, these refracted structures lend an organicism and vibrancy that conjures the ripples and reflections of Monet’s Nymphéas, wherein the depth of field is constantly shifting between the perceived surface of the painting, the water, the reflection, and the lilies that brake every plane of that same vision. Fadojutimi’s more technical layering delivers a sonata whose melodic construction extends the aesthetic reach of these inspirators.

Still more so, color cannot be overlooked in the present work. What appears initially as a uniquely inky canvas, A Declaration of War unravels in ribbons and petals of violet and yellow, crimson and sapphiric blue. Through the smallest intonations and gradations, Fadojutimi carves out form, striates and shades. Her brushwork is aqueous and nimble, it defies the scumbling of the canvas’ grain – it is a painter’s delight. What is the titular war that Fadojutimi is waging? We might believe it is one that strives to balance the scales of abstract painting, fusing the expressive with the individual. Certainly, Fadojutimi is of a generation for whom identity is not just an artistic question or a matter of stylistic choosing but is the very battleground on which the most serious socio-cultural and political issues continue to play out. Undeniably, it lends a stark and assertive tone, one that does not go unheeded in the context of the day’s headlines.

Beneath the Petticoat, 2018

Phillips London: 13 October 2023
Estimated: GBP 150,000 – 200,000
GBP 177,800 / USD 215,775

Jadé Fadojutimi – 20th Century & Con… Lot 10 October 2023 | Phillips

One of Britain’s most promising and accomplished young artists, Jadé Fadojutimi creates vast and immersive compositions in vividly realized color. Shifting rapidly between abstraction and moments of figuration, these paintings chart complex and stunningly beautiful ‘emotional landscapes’. Created in a burst of spontaneous, creative outpouring, her works thrum with a personality and vitality all of their own, their surfaces wonderfully alive like reflections caught in shifting water. Completed in 2018 and conceived as a sister piece to Bark – also offered concurrently as a highlight of our Day Sale – this sense of familial relationship and dialogue established between Fadojutimi’s works is especially pronounced in the present work, where the certain brilliant hues, forms, and gestural marks from the earlier composition repeat and respond like the alternating patterns of an antiphonal musical arrangement. Illuminating the astonishing maturity of her pictorial language, in placing these two works directly in dialogue with one another we might not only trace the development of her practice in fascinating ways, but also appreciate the profound consistency and focus of her creative vision.

[Left] Jadé Fadojutimi, Bark, 2016
[Right] Detail of the present work

Standing in front of her paintings, it is easy to understand the singular importance that Fadojutimi places on color. A vehicle for emotion, iridescent hues activate her muscular sense of line, producing bold, rhythmic compositions that pulsate with dramatic intensity. Complimenting each other in tone and scale, pearlescent hues of soft pinks, deep purples and lighter blues accented with bursts of yellow are exchanged between these two canvases, building to a crescendo in Beneath the Petticoat.  Showcasing Fadojutimi’s deepening command of the gestural mark and her harnessing of color as a vividly expressive tool, the same gentle tones used in the calmer and more contemplative Bark are here activated, brought into vibrant life to ‘bloom, recede, [and] flare up in tangled tones’ across the canvas.

Lee Krasner, Vernal Yellow, 1980, Museum Ludwig, Cologne. Image: Bridgeman Images, Artwork: © ARS, NY and DACS, London 2023

Conjuring images of the billowing layers of lace and light cottons evoked by the title, the centrifugal force of the composition is energized by Fadojutimi’s confident and direct handling, the entire surface here moving with a liquid iridescence, forms emerging and shifting before our eyes. Thinning her paints with the quick-drying agent Liquin, Fadojutimi is able to move her paint quickly and lightly across the canvas, building up her composition in layers – a pictorial syntax of dramatic sweeps of color counterpointed by wandering, calligraphic lines, and bursts of more textured concentrations of pigment that draw on a language of gestural abstraction best captured in the work of Abstract Expressionists Joan Mitchell and Lee Krasner. The latter’s bold combination of vivid color contrasts brought together in dynamic tension in her canvas and collages feels especially resonant here, underscoring Fadojutimi’s reputation as a leading voice in contemporary abstraction.

 

We All Have a Time Traveller’s Well, 2018

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 April 2022
Estimated: HKD 2,200,000 – 3,200,000
HKD 3,810,000 / USD 485,357

Jadé Fadojutimi 賈黛・法多朱蒂米 | We All Have a Time Traveller’s Well 我們都有時間旅行者之井 | 50th Anniversary Contemporary Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JADE FADOJUTIMI (b. 1993)
We All Have a Time Traveller’s Well, 2018
Oil on canvas
150×120 cm (59 x 47 1/4 inches)
Signed, titled and dated 2018 on the reverse

Executed in 2019, We all have a Time Traveller’s Well is a rhapsodic example of Jadé Fadojutimi’s bold treatment of color and unique language of abstraction. Using layers of rhythmically applied paint in her exploration of identity and memory, Fadojutimi creates complex, immersive landscapes of brushstrokes, as epitomized by the present work. With a string of successful exhibitions, Fadojutimi’s career continues to flourish. In 2020, at 27, she became the youngest artist to enter the Tate collection, with Fadojutimi’s work being showcased at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, as well as the Hepworth Wakefield, England this year.

The vibrational quality of Fadojutimi’s work is in full display in We all have a Time Traveller’s Well, in which rich, earthy shades of brown punctuate the soft glow of the artist’s layered shades of orange and yellow. Often thinning her oil pain with Liquin, a quick drying medium that allows her to move the paint with her brush freely and quickly across the surface of the canvas, Fadojutimi is able to give her compositions a sense of unbridled velocity. The Liquin gives the pigment a lucid, semi-transparent sheen, allowing the artist to “achieve a build of beautiful color layered glazes” that evoke fractured stained-glass windows (the artist, quoted in “Start: Oil Painting with Jadé Fadojutimi, Cass Art, online). With its tenaciously curved scalloped lines, We all have a Time Traveller’s Well creates a view to another world that is both disparate and analogous to ours, communicating truth and emotion through her spontaneous aesthetic.

We all have a Time Traveller’s Well exhibits Fadojutimi’s exquisite technique, one highly resolved for an artist so young in her career. Yet the movement and chromatic splendor of the present work also evokes Fadojutimi’s innate obsession with Japanese culture and film. She is said to work late into the night in her studio in South London listening to soundtracks from Japanese anime films, video games, and Korean dramas, such as Ori and the Blind Forest, Your Lie in April and Journey. Her compositions pulsate with the energy and dynamism of such animations, her gestural abstraction and vibrant use of color evoking a dream-like climax of cinematic drama. Emblematic of Fadojutimi’s highly intuitive visual practice, the present work embraces chance and serendipity through the artist’s exuberant, painterly abstraction.

The Misguided Thrill of Frills, 2017

Sotheby’s London: 14 October 2022
Estimated: GBP 300,000 – 400,000
GBP 554,400 / USD 692,054

The Misguided Thrill of Frills | The Now Evening Auction | 2022 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JADE FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
The Misguided Thrill of Frills, 2017
Oil on canvas
200×240 cm (78 ¼ x 94 ½ inches)
Signed Jadé Fadojutimi, titled The Misguided Thrill of Frills and dated April ’17 (on the reverse)

In colliding hues of ultramarine, cobalt, yellow and green, The Misguided Thrill of Frills is a vibrant example of Jadé Fadojutimi’s bold treatment of color and unique language of abstraction. Executed in 2017, the present work debuted at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery during the artist’s first ever solo exhibition, Heliophobia between December 2017 and January 2018. The painting belongs to an early series of emotional landscapes that explore notions of identity, imagination and play.

Astray, 2017

Christie’s London, 27 June 2022
Estimated: GBP 400,000 – 600,000
GBP 567,000 / USD 692,054

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993) (christies.com)

JADE FADOJUTIMI
Astray, 2017
Oil on canvas
200×140 cm (78.7 x 55.1 inches)

A thrilling symphony of light and color, spun from the depths of the artist’s imagination, Astray captures the dawn of Jadé Fadojutimi’s celebrated abstract language. Opulent strains of pink, purple and deep midnight blue collide with fiery red and orange tones, backlit by a luminous pale peach. Shapes form and dissolve, invoking leaves and canopies; lines twist and tangle in impenetrable knots. Painted in 2017—the year that Fadojutimi graduated with an MA from the Royal College of Art—and acquired by the present owner shortly afterwards, the work witnesses the birth of one of today’s most exciting painterly practices.

She Squalls, 2018

Christie’s New-York: 9 May 2022
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 500,000
USD 504,000

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993) (christies.com)

JADE FADOJUTIMI
She Squalls, 2018
Oil on canvas
200.4×160.2 cm (78.9×63 inches)

A key work in Jadé Fadojutimi’s oeuvre, She Squalls (2018) lent its name to the artist’s acclaimed first solo show with Galerie Gisela Capitain in Köln and marks a central moment in her development as one of the most exciting young artists working today. A squall is a storm, a moment of sudden and strong wind that changes one’s course, just as the present canvas changed the course of the Fadojutimi’s career and allowed her to break out with renewed potency and spontaneity. With its passionate and energetic marks, She Squalls is a vision of balletic movement and a sublime landscape that is essential to understanding Fadojutimi’s innovative career that has only grown in international recognition. A large canvas at more than six-and-a-half feet by five feet, She Squalls has a commanding presence that also contains all the intimacy of a textile. Inspired by a sojourn in Kyoto, Fadojutimi incorporates numerous references to create paintings that are global in scope. She has mounted a solo show at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (2021), with additional exhibitions forthcoming at the Hepworth Wakefield (2022) and the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino (2023). Her work is held in important public collections like the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, the Tate, London, and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

She Squalls pulsates with vitality, a beautiful storm watched from a peaceful shore. A grouping of marks at the center build upon each other to manifest a horizon line, asking us to look into the painting as we would an open window. Bolts of orange dart though the canvas like lightning, while pink, black, and blue vibrate around it, creating a still life of earthy hues. Fadojutimi makes her skilled presence known with bold strokes and unites herself with the canvas. It is a symphony of unexpected colors and forms coming together to form a spontaneous composition. She Squalls is undoubtedly a meaningful inflection point in a lauded career that will continue to shape how we think about painting and identity. With its assured brushstrokes and evocative abstract imagery, the present canvas advances a signature style for Fadojutimi that is unique and revelatory. She Squalls is a hallmark in Fadojutimi’s practice that sets the stage for what is to come. With major solo exhibitions on the horizon, she is poised to reshape contemporary art, traversing its wild seas with skill and foresight.

Let me just button up this veiled hope, 2021

Sotheby’s London: 2 March 2022
Estimated: GBP 120,000 – 180,000
GBP 415,800 / USD 555,808

JADE FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
Let me just button up this veiled hope, 2021
Oil, acrylic and oilstick on canvas
180×170 cm (71×67 inches)
Signed Jadé Fadojutimi, dated Feb’ 2021 and variously inscribed (on the verso)

Executed in February 2021, Let me just button up this veiled hope is an electrifying example of Jadé Fadojutimi’s dynamic abstraction. Swathes of seemingly translucent pink, blue, yellow and green coalesce in multifarious layers as the artist’s lyrical mark-making echo the aesthetics of stained glass filled with luminous light and energy. Colour stands at the forefront of Fadojutimi’s practice. In her highly nuanced, kaleidoscopic approach to color, Fadojutimi looks to a wide range of art historical sources, from Henri Matisse, Joan Mitchell and David Hockney to Makiko Kudo, Laura Owens and Amy Sillman.

A muddled mind that’s never confined, 2021

Sotheby’s London, 15 October 2021
Estimated: GBP 80,000 – 120,000
GBP 1,043,500 / USD 1,435,548

A Muddled Mind That’s Never Confined | Contemporary Art Day Auction | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JADE FADOJUTIMI
A Muddled Mind That’s Never Confined, 2021
Oil, acrylic and oilstick on canvas
180×190 cm (70.9×74.8 inches)

A Muddled Mind is never Confined takes the viewer on a journey, weaving through Jadé Fadojutimi’s memory, emotion and lived experience. In the present work, color blossoms across the painting, vibrating with the raw energy of her intricately layered brushtstrokes. Seeking inspiration from the objects that surround her while she works, Fadojutimi interrogates the associations that these objects hold for her. By translating the colors and textures of her surroundings into sweeping gestural paintings, Fadojutimi explores the construction of her own identity. Indeed, she pours herself into her paintings, working with a vulnerability that challenges the art historical trajectory of abstract painting.

The Barefooted Scurry Home, 2017

Sotheby’s London: 14 October 2021
Estimated: GBP 180,000 – 250,000
GBP 825,700 / USD 1,130,012

The Barefooted Scurry Home | Contemporary Art Evening Auction | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JADE FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
The Barefooted Scurry Home, 2017
Oil on canvas
170×190 cm (67 x 74 ⅞ inches)
Signed, signed with the artist’s initials, titled and dated Nov ’17 on the reverse

In luminous contrasting hues of teal, orange, red and green, The Barefooted Scurry Home is a superb example of Jadé Fadojutimi’s painterly oeuvre which explores notions of childhood play, emotion, imagination and identity. The present work bursts with frenetic movement and gesture, as loose sequences of thick brushwork collide with vigorously worked passages. This painting exudes the young artist’s energetic and highly layered approach to abstraction, marking a testament to Fadojutimi’s capacity to push boundaries and reinvent the very tenets of contemporary painting today. 

Myths of Pleasure, 2017

Phillips London: 15 October 2021
Estimated: GBP 80,000 – 120,000
GBP 1,172,000 / USD 1,612,326

Jadé Fadojutimi – 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Friday, October 15, 2021 | Phillips

JADE FADOJUTIMI
Myths of Pleasure, 2017
Oil on canvas
140.5 x 140.5 cm (55 3/8 x 55 3/8 inches)
Signed, titled and dated ‘Jadé Fadojutimi Nov ’17 ‘Myths of Pleasure” on the reverse

Executed in 2017, the year that Fadojutimi graduated from the Royal College, Myths of Pleasure is a virtuoso expression of this young artist’s technical accomplishment and intuitive approach to rhythm and colour. Its palette of deep, blood-reds, mossy splashes of green, and threads of shocking violet pulse with an unparalleled energy, giving weight to Fadojutimi’s assertion that ‘identity can be translated through colour’. Spatially and emotionally complex, knotted lines tangle together and unravel across the composition. Known to work in concentrated bursts of expulsive energy late into the night, Fadojutimi pours the immediate, overlaid sensations of a place, a person, a memory onto her canvases.

Under the Weather, 2017

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 9 October 2021
Estimated: HKD 1,300,000 – 1,900,000
HKD 6,225,000 / USD 799,645

Jadé Fadojutimi 賈黛・法多朱蒂米 | Under the Weather 不適 | Contemporary Art Evening Sale | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

 

JADE FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
Under the Weather, 2017
Oil on canvas
185×175 cm (72 ⅞ x 68 ⅞ inches)
Signed, titled and dated April 2017 on the reverse

In Under the Weather, Fadojutimi’s brushwork is purposeful and clear, teasing at both abstraction and figuration in the creation of a mesmerizing sensory experience. Almost Condo-esque in the curvature of her tenacious scalloped blue and mustard lines, this work stands out amongst her oeuvre in its more defined allusion to the figurative. With her bold paintings, Fadojutimi creates a view to another world that is both disparate and analogous to ours, communicating truth and emotion through her impulsive aesthetic. Each of Fadojutimi’s glittering, rhythmic canvases are unique, with the artist eschewing any one rigid, systematic way of working. Her canvas works such as Under the Weather take the viewer on a voyage of the imagination, determined by the context of their creation and the particular visual information that she gleans from her environment at the time of her work’s formation. Her rich source material includes the shapes, colors and patterns of her surroundings, as well as music, anime, video games, drawings and memories. Overall, her work is inspired by the beauty and texture of the everyday, a veritable celebration of life.

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Works on Paper

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WORK IN PROGRESS

What kind of foetus grows here?, 2020

Phillips online: 14 December 2023
Estimated: USD 6,000 – 8,000
USD 17,680

Jadé Fadojutimi – 20th Century & Co… Lot 32 December 2023 | Phillips

Landfall, 2020

Phillips New-York: 16 May 2023
Estimated: USD 30,000 – 40,000
USD 44,450

Jadé Fadojutimi – 20th Century & Contem… Lot 335 May 2023 | Phillips