# Faith Ringgold artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/faith-ringgold/
Profile generated: 2026-05-10T13:27:12.553Z
Quality: high confidence, strong sources

## Artist identity

- Birth date: 1930-10-08
- Death date: 2024-04-12
- Nationality: American
- Movements: Civil Rights Era Art, Feminist Art, Black Arts Movement
- Common media: Acrylic painting, Quilts and textile art, Mixed media sculpture, Performance art, Children's book illustration

## About Faith Ringgold

Faith Ringgold (1930–2024) was an American painter, mixed-media sculptor, quilt maker, author, and activist whose nearly seven-decade career centered Black women's experiences in American life. Born and raised in Harlem, New York, she studied art at the City College of New York and began creating politically engaged paintings in 1963, during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Ringgold described her early style as "Super Realist," using it to confront racial violence and gender inequality. She is best known for her painted story quilts—boldly colored narrative textiles that merge painting, quilted fabric, and written text—developed from the early 1980s onward. A professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego, Ringgold received 23 honorary doctorates and co-founded the advocacy group Women Students and Artists for Black Art Liberation. Her work is held by major institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

## Common works and media

Ringgold's auction and appraisal record includes acrylic paintings on canvas, painted story quilts combining acrylic on fabric with quilted borders, screen prints and lithographs, soft sculptures, performance art documentation, posters, and children's book illustrations. Her narrative quilts—typically featuring painted central panels surrounded by pieced fabric borders with handwritten text—are among her most distinctive and sought-after formats. Collectors may also encounter poster editions related to exhibitions, commissions, and social causes.

## Market and appraisal context

Faith Ringgold's secondary market is active and well-distributed across specialized and mainstream auction houses. The Appraisily corpus contains 203 auction lots spanning February 2002 through April 2026, with 131 carrying realized prices. Liquidity has increased noticeably: 36 lots appeared in the trailing 12 months versus 17 in the prior 12-month window, suggesting growing posthumous market interest. Swann Auction Galleries dominates the offering flow, followed by Black Art Auction, DUMBO Auctions, Rago Arts and Auction Center, and Wright, with occasional lots at Bonhams and Christie's. The price distribution is wide—realized prices range from $50 to $461,000—with a median of $3,250 and an interquartile range of roughly $2,159 to $7,000. Early political prints and posters from the 1970s (e.g., United States of Attica, Woman Freedom Now) and political works (Flag: Freedom, which realized $20,320) command premiums above the median, while editioned prints and posters from the 2000s–2010s cluster between $1,000 and $3,200. Original paintings and story quilts, which are rarer at auction, account for the upper tail of the distribution.

## Auction-house-backed market evidence

Faith Ringgold's secondary market is active and well-distributed across specialized and mainstream auction houses. The Appraisily corpus contains 203 auction lots spanning February 2002 through April 2026, with 131 carrying realized prices. Liquidity has increased noticeably: 36 lots appeared in the trailing 12 months versus 17 in the prior 12-month window, suggesting growing posthumous market interest. Swann Auction Galleries dominates the offering flow, followed by Black Art Auction, DUMBO Auctions, Rago Arts and Auction Center, and Wright, with occasional lots at Bonhams and Christie's. The price distribution is wide—realized prices range from $50 to $461,000—with a median of $3,250 and an interquartile range of roughly $2,159 to $7,000. Early political prints and posters from the 1970s (e.g., United States of Attica, Woman Freedom Now) and political works (Flag: Freedom, which realized $20,320) command premiums above the median, while editioned prints and posters from the 2000s–2010s cluster between $1,000 and $3,200. Original paintings and story quilts, which are rarer at auction, account for the upper tail of the distribution.

### Appraisal notes

Appraisily uses these auction records as comparable-sale evidence alongside the client's photos, measured dimensions, medium identification, signature verification, condition report, documented provenance, and edition or unique-work status. For Faith Ringgold, the key appraisal steps are: (1) confirm whether the work is an original painting, a painted story quilt, a screen print or lithograph, a poster, or a soft sculpture—medium and edition status have the largest impact on value; (2) identify the period (early 1960s–1970s political works trade at a premium versus later narrative editions); (3) verify exhibition history or catalogue raisonné inclusion; (4) compare against lots of the same medium, period, and approximate size from the Swann, Black Art Auction, and Rago records in this dataset. Because the posthumous market is still developing, appraisers should weight recent comparable lots more heavily than older results and adjust for market trajectory.

### Valuation factors

- Medium and uniqueness: original paintings and painted story quilts are significantly scarcer than editioned prints and posters and carry higher valuations
- Period and subject: early Civil Rights–era works from the 1960s–1970s (e.g., United States of Attica, For Whites Only, Flag series) attract strong collector premiums; narrative quilts from the 1980s onward are also highly sought
- Edition and size: screen prints, lithographs, and posters appear frequently and should be valued by edition number, sheet size, and condition rather than as unique works
- Provenance and exhibition history: works with documented museum exhibition records, catalogue raisonné entries, or publications in major catalogues carry measurable premiums
- Institutional holdings: works held by MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian, and other major institutions reinforce long-term market standing
- Posthumous market trajectory: the artist's death in April 2024 has increased auction volume (36 lots in the trailing 12 months versus 17 the prior year); prices are still stabilizing
- Condition: textile works and quilts are vulnerable to fading, staining, and fabric deterioration; condition reports are essential for accurate valuation

### Collector notes



### Market caveats

- The 203-lot corpus spans paintings, prints, posters, textile works, and mixed-media pieces; medium and edition status must be confirmed for each individual work before using these comparables for appraisal.
- Realized prices include buyer's premiums where reported by the auction house; some lots lack price data (priceRealised is null), meaning actual sell-through and average prices may differ from what the priced subset shows.
- The posthumous market is still developing following the artist's death in April 2024; the year-over-year doubling in lot count (17 to 36) may reflect estate dispersal or increased speculative interest rather than stable long-term demand.
- The $461,000 maximum price represents an outlier likely tied to a major unique work; the interquartile range ($2,159–$7,000) is more representative of typical auction results for editioned and mid-tier works.
- Category data is absent for most lots in the source pack; the commonAuctionCategories listed here are inferred from the existing artist profile mediums and recent lot titles rather than structured auction-house classifications.
- Appraisily auction signals are derived from public auction feeds and may not capture private sales, gallery pricing, or all auction houses globally.

### Market evidence sources

- undefined: https://appraisily.com/api/scraper-search/artists/faith-ringgold/seo-profile?recentLimit=24&relatedLimit=0
- undefined: https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot-faith-ringgold-1930-2024-flag-freedom-2001-195-c-4ee479eb46
- undefined: https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot-faith-ringgold-1930-2024-united-states-of-attica-1971-80-c-a8843aa941
- undefined: https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot-faith-ringgold-1930-2024-coming-to-jones-road-under-a-blood-red-sky-6-2005-141-c-6635a72aa4
- undefined: https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot-faith-ringgold-1930-2024-woman-freedom-now-1971-81-c-fad48278db
- undefined: https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot-faith-ringgold-1930-2024-for-whites-only-69-c-7e74fdb849
- undefined: https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot-faith-ringgold-yes-we-did-244-c-8284d30ae4
- undefined: https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot-faith-ringgold-somebody-stole-my-broken-heart-241-c-d364af198a

## Appraisily data basis

Appraisily artist pages combine independent artist identity research with auction records, auction-house context, sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lots when those records are available. This page draws on Library of Congress authority data, Getty ULAN, VIAF, the Museum of Modern Art, the RKD Netherlands Institute for Art History, Wikidata, and the artist's official site.

## Sources

- Library of Congress: https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n84150479
- The Museum of Modern Art: https://www.moma.org/artists/7066
- RKD Netherlands Institute for Art History: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/321763
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5431220
- VIAF: https://viaf.org/viaf/96117658/
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500063866
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_Ringgold
- Faith Ringgold: http://faithringgold.com