After decades in which abstraction and conceptual art set the agenda, the figure has returned to the center of the contemporary market. Collectors, curators, and institutions are paying renewed attention to artists painting the human form.
The Return of the Figure
Part of the appeal is immediacy. A figurative work invites instant connection — we recognize a body, a face, an emotion before we analyze anything. In an age of overwhelming abstraction in daily life, that directness feels grounding.
What distinguishes this wave from earlier figurative revivals is that it isn't a rejection of abstraction so much as an absorption of it. Painters like Tori Pounds build the figure out of memory and observation rather than strict likeness, letting gesture and unresolved paint handling carry as much weight as the image itself. The body appears, but it is constructed through the same expressive freedom that defined the abstract painting collectors were trained to value for the last half-century. That hybrid approach is a large part of why current figuration reads as contemporary rather than nostalgic — it keeps the painterly risk while restoring a recognizable subject to hold onto.
It also changes how collectors read a work at first sight. Where an abstract canvas asks you to sit with color and composition before you can say anything about it, a figurative painting gives you an entry point immediately — then rewards the longer look with everything the artist does around that entry point: the cropping, the palette, the distortion, the historical reference. That two-step read is part of why figuration photographs and sells well online, where a collector's first encounter with a painting is almost always a thumbnail rather than the work in a room.
What's Driving Demand
Today's collectors are drawn to work that speaks to identity, memory, and lived experience. Contemporary figuration does exactly that, treating the body not as decoration but as a vehicle for meaning. As a new, broader generation enters the market, demand for emotionally resonant figurative work has surged.
Three forces are compounding that shift. Generationally, younger collectors have come of age without the mid-century assumption that abstraction is the serious position and figuration is merely illustrative — they respond to legibility, to work that rewards a first look and keeps giving on the second. Structurally, figurative painting spans a wide range of price points, from works on paper by emerging artists to major statement canvases, which lets a new collector build a collection incrementally rather than needing gallery-level capital on day one. And culturally, identity, embodiment, and memory are simply more present in public conversation than they were a generation ago — painters working in the figure are positioned to respond to that directly, in a way pure abstraction rarely can.
Galleries and fairs have followed rather than led this shift, expanding figurative programming and giving more wall space to painters working directly with the body — a response to where collector attention and sales already were, not a trend manufactured from the top down.
Fashion and material culture have become one of the sharpest lenses for this shift. Natasha Joseph's paintings of Chanel boutiques, vintage Vogue spreads, and the small rituals of modern social life treat brand and garment as stand-ins for aspiration and feeling — extending the figurative tradition into the territory of consumer identity rather than away from it.
Figurative Work at Art of NOMA
Our program is rich with it — from Tori Pounds and Lanise Howard to Karlos Ibarra and Katherine Gutt. Explore original figurative paintings, or read about the new generation of figurative painting.
The range within the program shows how wide "figurative" has become as a working category. Alyssa Tang, an artist and architect based in Hong Kong, treats the body as material and pressure — her figures built more like structural studies than portraits, closer in spirit to drawing and engineering than to likeness. Working across oil and charcoal, she builds figures through layered erasure and reconstruction, so the finished body often reads as something arrived at rather than depicted from the start. Aurora Kalos works from the opposite direction, painting women suspended between the hyperreal and the surreal, where the subject's interior, psychological state is the real content of the picture. And in In Sync XVIII, Karlos Ibarra treats the human figure as a vessel for feeling rather than a record of appearance — the kind of work that explains why the category keeps expanding rather than settling into one house style. Ibarra, a Mexican painter working in acrylic, returns to the figure as a recurring subject across the In Sync series, using scale and repetition the way other artists use color — as a way of building emotional weight over a body of work rather than a single canvas.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does "figurative art" mean in contemporary painting?
Figurative art depicts a recognizable subject — most often the human body — as opposed to abstract art, which works through color, form, and gesture without direct reference to an object. Much contemporary figuration blends the two, using the figure as a starting point rather than a strict likeness.
Why are collectors buying figurative paintings right now?
Figurative work offers immediate legibility — viewers connect with a recognizable body or face before analyzing technique. Combined with themes of identity and memory that resonate with a broader, younger collector base, figuration has become one of the more actively collected categories in the emerging-art market.
Is figurative art a good starting point for new collectors?
Figurative painting spans a wide range of price points, from works on paper by emerging artists to larger statement canvases, which makes it accessible for someone building a first collection. As with any art purchase, buy what you respond to — performance in emerging art is far less predictable than in blue-chip categories.
What's the difference between figurative and portrait painting?
Portraiture is a specific type of figurative art focused on capturing a particular individual's likeness or identity. Figurative art is broader — it can depict any human body, real or invented, in any setting, without necessarily functioning as a portrait of one person.
To see the full range of figurative work in the gallery, browse the paintings collection or explore artists individually on our artists page. If a particular piece catches your eye — from Karlos Ibarra's In Sync series to the portraits of Aurora Kalos — reach out about availability and we'll help you learn more about the work and the artist behind it.