A Conan the Barbarian painting could fetch more than $10 million at auction this week, the latest sign of a red-hot fantasy art market.
Long marginalized by the arts establishment as lacking in conceptual pedigree, fantasy art has no greater luminary than longtime Conan illustrator Frank Frazetta, five of whose works have sold for seven figures this year alone — up from $674,640 in total sales for 2018.
Frazetta’s works have influenced filmmaker George Lucas, whose Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is set to open in 2026, and will include Frazetta works — signaling “increasing institutional interest in the best of fantasy art as its significance becomes impossible to ignore,” a Heritage Auctions executive told Artnet News.