# Eliel Saarinen artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/eliel-saarinen/
Profile generated: 2026-08-24T12:41:47.900Z
Quality: medium confidence, adequate sources

## Artist identity

- Nationality: Finnish, American
- Common media: Architectural design, Urban planning, Graphic design

## Portrait

![Eliel Saarinen](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Eliel_Saarinen.jpg)
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eliel_Saarinen.jpg

## About Eliel Saarinen

Eliel Saarinen (1873–1950), also catalogued as Gottlieb Eliel Saarinen, was a Finnish-American architect whose practice also encompassed urban planning and design. He worked first in Finland and emigrated to the United States in 1923. In 1896, he formed an architectural office with Herman Gesellius and Armas Lindgren, leaving the partnership in 1907. Public discovery sources associate his Finnish work with Jugendstil and National Romantic architecture, although the collected institution-grade sources do not provide enough detail to assign those movement labels here with high confidence. Collectors may encounter his name on architectural and design material, publications, and objects connected with studio practice. Because his son Eero Saarinen also became a prominent architect and joined the family office, precise cataloguing of creator, date, and object type is especially important. International museum and library authority records provide a well-established identity trail for Eliel Saarinen.

## Common works and media

The most defensible categories in this source pack are architectural and design material, together with urban-planning and graphic-design contexts. Library records also document Saarinen's authorship of publications concerning art, architecture, and cities. The pack does not establish how auction records divide among drawings, prints, furniture, textiles, editions, publications, or other objects, so each item should be described from its actual medium and documented relationship to Saarinen's practice.

## Market and appraisal context

Appraisal should begin by confirming whether an object is by Eliel Saarinen, from a related office, or connected to another member of the Saarinen family. The source pack confirms that Appraisily indexes public auction records under his name, but it does not provide a major auction-house biography, lot-level analysis, or category breakdown, so it cannot support price forecasts. Useful comparisons should be matched by object type, medium, date, attribution, and documented relationship to a project or career phase. Sale dates, realized prices, and closely comparable lots can provide context when available, but they should be evaluated alongside object-specific documentation and examination.

## Appraisily data basis

Appraisily artist pages combine artist-identity research with indexed auction records. When records are available, auction-house context, sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lots are used to inform object-specific research without replacing attribution or physical examination.

## Sources

- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q312028
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500027014
- VIAF: https://viaf.org/viaf/39471157/
- IdRef: https://www.idref.fr/033531889
- The Museum of Modern Art: https://www.moma.org/artists/64766
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliel_Saarinen
- Wikipedia: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliel_Saarinen
- Appraisily: https://appraisily.com/artist/eliel-saarinen/
- Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eliel_Saarinen.jpg