# Michael Craig-Martin artist context and auction value notes Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/michael-craig-martin/ Profile generated: 2026-05-24T03:30:00.000Z Quality: high confidence, strong sources ## Artist identity - Birth date: 1941-08-28 - Nationality: Irish, British - Movements: Conceptual Art, Young British Artists (influencer and mentor), British Pop Art (adjacent; bold graphic style) - Common media: Painting (acrylic on canvas; bold outlined imagery), Sculpture (steel wire and wall-based line drawings), Prints and editions (screenprints, digital prints), Installation art, Drawing, Digital and computer-based works ## About Michael Craig-Martin Sir Michael Craig-Martin (born Dublin, 1941) is an Irish-British conceptual artist and painter whose career has shaped several generations of contemporary art. He studied at Yale University before settling in London, where he became a defining professor at Goldsmiths, University of London. There he taught and mentored many of the artists later known as the Young British Artists, including Damien Hirst and Gary Hume. Craig-Martin is best known for his 1973 conceptual work An Oak Tree — a glass of water presented as an oak tree — which remains a landmark of British conceptual art. Since the 1980s, his paintings and wall-based sculptures have used flat, vividly coloured outlines of everyday objects to explore how images, words, and things relate to one another. He was knighted for services to art. His work is held by major institutions including Tate, MoMA, and the Centre Pompidou. ## Common works and media Collectors most frequently encounter Craig-Martin's acrylic paintings on canvas depicting everyday objects — chairs, light bulbs, shoes, headphones, books, and tools — rendered in bold black outlines against bright coloured grounds. His wall-mounted steel-wire sculptures translate the same linear imagery into three dimensions. Screenprints and digital prints on paper are published in numbered editions and are widely traded. Computer Portraits and Computer Editions represent his engagement with digital media. Large-scale installations and public commissions, while less common on the secondary market, form an important part of his output. Drawings and early mixed-media works from the 1960s and 1970s appear less often but are of art-historical interest. ## Market and appraisal context Michael Craig-Martin's work appears regularly at major auction houses, spanning paintings, prints and editions, sculptures, and digital works. Large acrylic paintings of his signature outlined everyday objects tend to be the most sought-after at auction. Screenprints and computer-generated editions are published in numbered runs and represent a more accessible entry point for collectors. Early conceptual pieces from the 1970s, including any work related to An Oak Tree, are rare and historically significant. When appraising a Craig-Martin work, key factors include the medium, edition number and size, provenance linking to a recognised gallery, the recognisability of the subject motif, and its date within his stylistic development. ## Appraisily data basis Appraisily artist pages combine identity and biographical research from museum, library-authority, and artist-estate sources with public auction records, auction-house context, sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lots when those records are available. This page draws on Tate, RKD, Getty ULAN, VIAF, the artist's official website, and Wikipedia. ## Sources - Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24503 - Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Craig-Martin - Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500013170 - VIAF: https://viaf.org/viaf/39468202/ - RKD - Netherlands Institute for Art History: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/18955 - Tate: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/sir-michael-craig-martin-955 - The Museum of Modern Art: https://www.moma.org/artists/1288 - Michael Craig-Martin: http://www.michaelcraig-martin.com - Library of Congress: https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n86808666