Michael Yearwood-Dan, a painter whose colorful abstractions have generated a loyal following, has joined Hauser & Wirth, one of the biggest galleries in the world. At just 30 years old, she is one of the youngest artists represented by the gallery, whose roster also includes painters such as Nicolas Party, Henry Taylor, and Nicole Eisenman.
Yearwood-Dan will continue to be represented by Marianne Boesky, the New York–based gallery that has shown the London-based artist since 2021. She had previously shown with London’s Tiwani Contemporary, which staged Yearwood-Dan’s first gallery solo show in 2019.
Many of Yearwood-Dan’s abstractions contain hues and titles that allude to the artist’s British Caribbean heritage. Queer themes are also embedded in her canvases, which are sometimes affixed with crystals, gold leaf, and other objects. Half-visible flowers recur in her art, as do scrawled phrases.
She started out in a figurative mode, then pivoted to abstraction, a move that she has said helped her avoid the “continued commodification of the black figure.”
Her market is fast-ascendant. In 2023, she notched a new auction record when one of her paintings sold for $878,300 at Christie’s London, outpacing its high estimate 12 times over.
In a statement, Hauser & Wirth co-president Manuela Worth said that Yearwood-Dan has “consistently presented her work with a deep consideration of the architectural environment viewers are invited into, and the formal qualities of text and visual cues in her art provide multiple access points for the work. In this way, Michaela is reinventing the role of abstraction as something that can speak to an ever-wider range of audiences.”
Michaela Yearwood-Dan, Sappho, 2023.
©Michaela Yearwood-Dan/Photo Deniz Guzel/Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth, and Marianne Boesky Gallery
