# Andrés Serrano artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/andres-serrano/
Profile generated: 2026-05-08T12:15:37.373Z
Quality: high confidence, strong sources

## Artist identity

- Birth date: 1950-08-15
- Nationality: American
- Movements: Transgressive art, Contemporary photography
- Common media: Cibachrome and C-print color photographs, Large-format photography

## About Andrés Serrano

Andrés Serrano (born August 15, 1950, New York City) is an American photographer and visual artist whose large-format color images have provoked public debate for decades. He studied at the Brooklyn Museum School of Art in the late 1960s before developing a practice centered on Cibachrome and c-print photography. Serrano's work examines religion, mortality, sexuality, race, and power through unflinching, often confrontational imagery. His most widely recognized piece, Piss Christ (1987), became a flashpoint in the late-1980s culture wars over public arts funding. Across series such as The Morgue, A History of Sex, America, Torture, and The Game: All Things Trump, Serrano has maintained a focus on subjects society prefers to look away from. His photographs are held by major museums including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and he has produced commissioned work for clients such as Metallica. With over three dozen distinct series to date, Serrano remains an active and prominent figure in contemporary art.

## Common works and media

Serrano works primarily in large-format color photography, producing Cibachrome prints and c-prints. His body of work includes close-up photographs of bodily fluids, submerged religious objects, morgue portraits, street-level portraits of homeless individuals (Nomads), Ku Klux Klan members, sex workers, political figures and celebrities (America), explicit nudes, landscape and travel series (Istanbul, Budapest, Cuba, Jerusalem), sculptural feces photographs (Shit), and politically charged compositions (Torture, The Game: All Things Trump, Infamous). He has also produced commissioned album art and commercial photography. Collectors most frequently encounter his limited-edition photographs from the 1987–2019 series.

## Market and appraisal context

Andrés Serrano's photographs appear regularly at auction, with hundreds of recorded lots. Value depends heavily on which series a work belongs to, the print medium (Cibachrome versus c-print), edition number, dimensions, provenance, and whether the piece has been exhibited publicly or held in a museum collection. Works from his best-known series — particularly Immersions, The Morgue, and America — tend to attract the strongest market interest. Collectors should verify edition details, confirm authenticity through the artist's documentation or gallery records, and review comparable auction results for the specific series and format before making valuation judgments.

## Appraisily data basis

Appraisily artist pages combine structured artist-identity research from museum records, library authority files, and the artist's own documentation with auction records, auction-house context, sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lots when those records are available. Sources for this page include the Museum of Modern Art, the Getty Union List of Artist Names, the Library of Congress Name Authority File, VIAF, the RKD Netherlands Institute for Art History, Wikidata, and the artist's official website.

## Sources

- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q503335
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andres_Serrano
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500059149
- VIAF: https://viaf.org/viaf/4499247/
- Library of Congress: https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no92024266
- The Museum of Modern Art: https://www.moma.org/artists/7018
- RKD: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/97428
- Andrés Serrano: http://andresserrano.org/