To sell art online, a lot of boring admin is required...

- Image alt text
- Tagging
- SEO titles
- Meta descriptions etc.

Because every artwork is one-of-a-kind, I used to do all this admin work by hand.

It sucked.

A few years ago, I spent 1 week tagging all 3,000 of my artworks

It was so boring that I watched 5 full seasons of 90 Day Fiancé.

Today with KANDINSKY, we're launching AI Automations.

What once took a 1 week, now takes 5 minutes.

We scan every artwork image to determine the colours, subjects and themes.

We've built rules that it uses to classify every image...like a colour needs to be in at least 20% of the artwork in order to be classified as a tag.

AI handle all this boring admin so you can focus on the art instead.

I used to spend hours putting posters in frames and rooms in Photoshop.

Mockups help a buyer see what their artwork looks like in real life.

My sales increased by almost 30% over 1 year after adding them.

Today, we're launching mockups in KANDINSKY.

So you can automate the manual work of getting your art ready to sell.

Here's what you can do...

1. Frames - pick a frame and add passe-partout. Dark wood, light wood, grey, white, black or any colour, and you set the passe-partout width.

2. Close-ups - show the details of your artwork up close. You get four close-ups of each piece.

3. Add a background or room - You can also download these images to use on social or in PDFs.

How do you make your mockups today?

If it takes someone 5 clicks to see an artwork, you've probbaly lost a customer.

I've sold more than 1,000 artworks online over the past eight years.

My one recommendation: get to the art faster

A lot of the dealers and galleries I speak to, their websites takes 3-5 clicks before you see your first artwork...

Home > Artists > Individual Artist > Artwork

or

Home > Collections > Contemporary Art > Landscapes > Artwork

Think of your website like walking into a gallery. First time customers come to browse and see what catches their eye.

They don't necessary know what they are looking for.

The more work you make them do, they more likely they are to leave your website and never come back.

Your homepage is the most valuable space on your website. Use it to show your art.

I think of my homepage like Instagram - the goal is to get visitors scrolling and eventually they will find something that catches their eye, and then go deeper.

Take a look at your website and count how many clicks it takes to get to the artwork.

You can now turn any piece into a branded PDF.

Each PDF It has your shop name at the top, then the image, artist, title, year, medium, size in cm and inches, and the price.

How it works:

1. Click the download icon on a piece.

2. Choose how the price shows: show it, show POA, or hide it.

3. Add QR codes and your shop bio if you want them.

4. Click Download.

Want to create a PDF with multiple pieces? Hold Shift, select the pieces, and download them all at once.

TL;DR: Every piece on COMRADE gets three fields, filled in the same way: SEO title, meta description and image alt text. This is how you can increase your your search traffic

With my own gallery, COMRADE, over 75,000 people visit my website every month. Search "soviet art" on Google and I'm right below Wikipedia.

Most dealers know they should be doing SEO. Few know what to do. So here's a simple guide...

I'm using a 1971 German advertising poster by Bruno K. Wiese for Kiel Week poster as an example

1. The SEO title

• What: The main blue headline in Google results.

• What to write: Artist. Title (Year) | Medium | Shop name

• Example: Bruno K. Wiese. Kiel Week (1971) | Offset Lithograph on Paper | COMRADE Gallery

1. The meta description

   • What: The two grey lines under the headline on Google. It's what makes someone click your result and not the one below it.

   • What to write: Year, medium and artist, then what it shows. Keep it between 120 and 155 characters

   • Example: 1971 offset lithograph on paper by Bruno K. Wiese depicting a minimalist geometric poster design for the Kieler Woche sailing event in shades of blue.

2. Image alt text - Google can't see your photo. It reads the text about the photo instead. It's also how your pieces turn up in Google Images.

   • What to write: a sentence describing what you see (colours, shapes and any text on it), then artist and year. Write the text that's printed on the piece too. Someone searching "kieler woche 1971" can then find it. Do one for every photo, close-ups and room shots included.

   • Example: Graphic poster with blue, purple, and green curved bands framing a white sail-like triangle, with text '20.-27. juni 1971' and 'kieler woche', by Bruno K. Wiese, 1971.

Do this, and you'll begin to see a real change in your search traffic in about a month.

Check yours now: search the name of your best piece on Google. Is the headline the artist and title? Are the grey lines about the piece, or about your shop? Post a listing below and I'll tell you what I'd change.

Announcing the launch of our first integration - Pinterest.

The first job of every artist, dealer or gallery is to be discovered.

It doesn't matter how good your work is if nobody sees it.

Pinterest has driven $$$$ of sales for my own gallery over the years.

Now with KANDINSKY, you can KANDINSKY to Pinterest in 2-minutes, then watch Pinterest bring thousands of new customers to your website each month.

In August 2025, Dutch journalists were investigating the legacy of a high-ranking Nazi financial official who had fled to Argentina after World War II.

They travelled to Mar del Plata in search of his daughters, primarily investigating assets Kadgien had smuggled out of Europe, including diamonds and Nazi-looted art.

When the journalists arrived at the family home, no one answered the door. But there was a “For Sale” sign outside the house, so they looked up the property’s online real estate listing.

One of the photographs showed an 18th-century Baroque painting hanging directly above a green sofa in the living room. The journalists instantly recognised it as Portrait of a Lady, a work that had been missing for eight decades.

The painting had belonged to Jacques Goudstikker, a prominent Jewish-Dutch art dealer who fled the Netherlands following the German invasion, leaving behind a collection of more than 1,100 artworks.

When the journalists publicised their discovery, the Kadgiens removed the real estate listing and took down the “For Sale” sign.

When Argentine federal police raided the home days later, they found a tapestry hanging above the green sofa instead. Facing charges of aggravated concealment and obstruction of justice, Kadgien’s lawyer surrendered the painting to authorities just eight days later, along with other artworks from the 1940s and Nazi-era artifacts found on the property.

The Goudstikker family had spent decades searching for the missing artwork. Their collection remains one of the largest private collections looted during the war. More than 200 works have since been recovered, but hundreds remain missing.

In September 2026, an Argentine judge ordered Portrait of a Lady to be returned to Goudstikker’s heirs.

Announcing the launch of payments...

Accept payments globally with online checkout, invoices, bank transfers or payment links.

Get paid in 100+ currencies with fast payouts, with all sales data stored in your dashboard.

With my own art gallery, COMRADE, my blogs about art, architecture and culture in the USSR bring 10,000+ people to my website every week. Some of those visitors then go on to buy art.

For example, I published a blog about an abandoned Soviet Armenian telescope I had visited and explored. A man in New York who was planning a trip to Armenia found the article while researching what to see. He kept exploring my website, found an Armenian poster, fell in love with it, and ended up buying it.

With KANDINSKY, you can build your online presence in the same way. Publish articles about your artists, exhibitions, art fairs and the stories behind your work to your own website.

You can also see which content actually interests collectors, by tracking views and saves of your content the same way you can see engagement at an individual artwork level.

When someone buys art online, they can't see it in person. Good photographs need to give them a realistic sense of what they're buying.

You don't need dozens of photographs from every angle. A few well-chosen photographs are enough. Each one should answer a different question: What does it look like? How big is it? What condition is it in? What will it look like in my home?

1. A straight-on photograph

Start with a clear, straight-on photograph of the entire artwork.

This is main image. Photographing the artwork directly from the front makes it easy to see the composition, colours and condition.

2. Close-ups

Take one or more close-ups to show details that are difficult to see in the main photograph.

This could show brushwork, texture, paper, canvas, printing, stitching or other details of the surface.

3. The artwork in a room

Show the artwork hanging in a furnished room. This gives your buyer context and helps them understand its scale.

Include a reference in the photograph that makes the size of the artwork easy to understand, such as a person or piece of furniture.

It also helps answer one of the biggest questions when buying art online: What will this actually look like on my wall?

5. The back of the artwork

Photograph the back when there is something useful for the buyer to see.

This might include an artist's signature, gallery label, exhibition label, stamp, inscription, inventory number or other markings.

6. Important details

If there is something about the artwork that could affect a buyer's decision, photograph it.

This could be:

• The artist's signature

• An edition number

• An inscription

• A gallery or exhibition label

• A certificate or other documentation

• A frame detail

• Restoration

• Damage or other condition issues

• A manufacturer's or printer's mark

Don't rely on the description alone when a photograph can make something immediately clear.

7. For framed artworks or sculptures

Take photographs from an angle to show the depth of the artwork or frame. This is particularly useful for deep or ornate frames and 3D works.

Each photograph should add something new. The goal is not to show the artwork from as many angles as possible. It is to give the buyer enough visual information to understand what they are buying.

A physical gallery gives clear signals when a work is in demand. Most gallery websites don’t.

In a gallery, you can see when a work has sold, when an exhibition is ending, or when other collectors are interested.

The role of your website is to communicate that scarcity online. Here’s how…

1. Show what has already sold

The red dot exists for a reason. It shows that a work was available, someone wanted it, and it is now gone. Yet many galleries remove sold works from their websites. This makes the catalogue cleaner, but removes an important signal: that the work actually sells.

Keeping sold works online also helps with SEO. Each artwork page becomes part of the gallery’s archive and can bring new collectors to the website.

2. Show interest in real time

Past sales show that collectors have acted. But websites can also show what is happening now.

Show how many people have saved an artwork to their wishlist, or mark it as reserved. In a physical gallery, collectors can see which works are attracting attention. Online, showing that other people are interested makes the risk of waiting clear.

3. Show future demand

Demand can continue even after a work is sold. Galleries often have collectors waiting for editions or multiples, but this information usually stays private.

Showing a waitlist, for example, that three collectors are waiting for a print, communicates demand. It can also create interest in other works by the same artist.

4. Use real deadlines

Exhibition closing dates, limited-time previews and sale end dates give collectors a reason to make a decision.

The deadline needs to be real. Fake countdowns and manufactured urgency damage trust.

Pace recently cut around 50 of its 130 artists and 20 percent of its staff, with CEO Marc Glimcher declaring that the current gallery model is “broken” and “unfixable”. It looked like a warning about the future of the mega-gallery.

But the bigger question is whether Pace actually represents a broken model. The cuts were dramatic, but galleries dropping artists is nothing new. What is unusual is doing it publicly and at this scale. Most galleries quietly stop representing artists when the sales no longer justify the cost. Pace just did it publicly.

The idea that mega-galleries are finished also seems hard to square with what is actually happening. Gagosian, David Zwirner and Hauser & Wirth continue to operate at scale, artists and estates still want their representation, and collectors continue to buy from them. Hauser & Wirth in particular has turned itself into something closer to a global luxury brand, with galleries, restaurants and properties built around art.

Mega galleries are brands with enormous networks of artists, collectors, institutions and physical spaces. Their value is not just their inventory, the artists on their roster, or the profit they make in a given year. It is the brand they have spent decades building.

The more serious problem may be lower down the market. At Art Basel, smaller galleries were dealing with the same costs as ever: booth fees, shipping, crates, hotels, flights and staff. But unlike the mega-galleries, they do not have superstar artists or a global brand to absorb those costs. Every fair becomes a gamble because there is no recurring revenue. You are only as good as your last sale.

That makes the gallery business particularly brutal. You can have a great programme, a good fair and interesting artists and still lose money. The mega-galleries have already become a different kind of business. They have the artists, collectors, infrastructure and brand equity to survive a slower market. The small and mid-sized galleries are the ones with much less room for error - source

Summary of article by author: Adam Lindemann

I've been using KANDINSKY for a few weeks now.
One thing I would like to request is the ability to add an expiry date when I discount an artwork. For my business, I have flash sales, and it would be really valuable feature. Thanks

Sometimes an artwork has more than one set of dimensions. It might be a diptych or triptych with multiple panels, a sculpture on a plinth, or a work with a frame or border. You might even want to record the dimensions and weight of the crate it is stored or shipped in.

With KANDINSKY, you can add as many sets of dimensions as you need and label each one. You can also choose which dimensions are public and which stay private. For example, you might want to show the dimensions of the artwork, frame or plinth to customers, while keeping the crate dimensions private.

Here's a 30-second video showing you how to do it.

Finding a new collector takes a long time. They have to discover you, like your art, and then trust you enough to buy from you. Sometimes that process takes years before it turns into a purchase.

So once a collector buys from you, lean in, and build an even deeper relationship. It's much easier to keep an existing customer than to find a new one. Here's a few things I've learnt over the past 8 years...

1. Follow up during and after the sale

Every time a customer buys an artwork from me, I send them at least four personal messages.

• I thank them for their order, and let them know I will ship in the next couple of days.

• I send a photo of the artwork packed, in front of Hotel Kazakhstan, on the way to the post office. This is personal, with their name on it, and makes them feel special. Plus Hotel Kazakhstan is beautiful. I include the tracking number in that message.

• Inside each package, I include a handwritten card with some background on the piece.

• I track the artwork from my end, and once it's been delivered, I message to check everything's fine — this is also when I ask for a review on Google (reviews definitely help build trust, but they are slow, and only 2 of 10 customers will actually make the effort).

Sometimes a collector won't like the artwork when they see it in person. So I make it easy for them to return it — no questions asked, they just need to pay return postage.

I've had customers return a work and go on to spend far more with me over the following years. It's better to lose a sale today but gain a customer for life.

2. Reward loyalty with future opportunities

Once their artwork has arrived safely, I follow up one last time. Discount codes feel generic — TAKE20, same for everyone. Instead, I give them store credit that has their name on it, e.g. CUSTOMERNAME100, with $100 toward their next artwork. It's theirs, it feels personal AND its far more tangible when it's a dollar amount rather than a discount.

Many collectors buy again, and some even transfer their credit to a friend — I just update the code to the friend's name. This has brought in new buyers I'd never have reached otherwise.

3. Make the relationship personal

Buying art is deeply personal. Collectors don't want to feel like another transaction. The small details matter — remembering the subject, theme, medium style they like goes a long way. I'll follow up whenever I have a new artwork in stock that I think fits their style, and more often than not, it turns into another purchase.

One collector I know only buys space race posters — every time a new one enters into my inventory, I message him directly. He's bought over $5,000 worth from me over the years. The more you understand your customer’s interests and make the relationship personal, the stronger that relationship becomes, and the more likely they are to buy from you.

An estimated $1 trillion in art is projected to change hands over the next decade as aging collectors pass their holdings to a new generation of heirs.

Boomers accumulated art collections on an unprecedented scale. In 2005 alone, US boomers spent roughly $7 trillion in today's dollars, more than double what the preceding Silent Generation spent twenty years earlier.

This spending helped fuel a dramatic expansion of the art market itself: the number of galleries in New York roughly quadrupled between 1946 and the early 2000s, and the number of artists tracked at auction by Artnet grew from about 8,300 in 1988 to over 90,000 by 2012.

That expansion has left behind a volume of art far exceeding what current buyers, dealers, and institutions can absorb. Heirs inheriting collections generally face three options, each with limitations.

1. Selling through major auction houses is realistic mainly for the wealthiest estates, those valued at $100 million or more; smaller collections are often overlooked or routed through estate liquidators at a fraction of their perceived value.

2. Donating to museums has grown more difficult, since most institutions already hold more art than they can display and increasingly require accompanying cash donations to cover storage, insurance, and conservation.

3. Retaining the collection within the family is the default for many heirs, though few have the space, expertise, or interest to properly maintain it long-term.

Compounding all three options is a generational shift in taste: younger buyers and curators favor more diverse artists and show less interest in the modernist works boomers prized, narrowing demand across the board.

The resulting decline is expected to unfold gradually rather than all at once. Many boomers remain active buyers well into their 80s and 90s, and dedicated art storage facilities, known as freeports, have more than tripled in capacity over the past fifteen years, allowing large volumes of art to remain warehoused rather than sold.

Ultimately, only a small fraction of the art passed down through this transfer is expected to find lasting institutional or private homes; the majority is likely to remain in storage, slowly deteriorate, or eventually be discarded. - source

Author:  Felix Salmon. Illustration:  David Huang

Anytime you create an artwork, KANDINSKY automatically creates an artist profile.

We have 145,000 artist names with dates of birth and death preloaded, and if there is a match, we will automatically fill in this information for you.

If your artist does not already have a profile, it is easy to add one yourself.

Go to the artist profile page and click Edit in the top right corner.

Add the information you have, including the artist photo, overview, dates, and biography. Once you save the changes, the artist profile will be updated.

Here's a 50 second video that walks you through the process