Ayako Rokkaku Value: Top Prices Paid at Auction

Rokkaku's current auction record was set in July 2022 when Untitled (2017) sold for £974,400 at SBI Art Auction Co. in Tokyo, nearly doubling its high estimate of £426,300. This vibrant acrylic painting, on canvas 1.5 metres wide, exemplifies her signature style: a dreamlike landscape of swirling pinks, blues, and yellows, with a central child-like figure, created through her characteristic finger-painting technique. The work's exceptional result came during the artist's market peak in 2022, when six of her top 10 prices were achieved across multiple auction houses, demonstrating extraordinary collector confidence in an artist who was just 40 years old at the time, with barely two decades of artistic output behind her.

Achieving this value at Christie's Hong Kong on the same day Rokkaku’s record was set in May 2022, the large-scale Untitled (2021) again demonstrates the remarkable market confidence in Rokkaku's recent output. At 180 x 140 cm, this acrylic on canvas showcases her ability to maintain compositional harmony across larger formats while sustaining the energetic, child-like quality that has become her trademark. Created just one year before its sale, and selling for nearly seven times its high estimate, this result underscores one of the most unusual aspects of Rokkaku's market: collectors' willingness to pay premium prices for fresh-to-market works rather than waiting for them to develop secondary market provenance - a pattern typically indicating an exceptionally promising market for collectors.

This 2019 Untitled canvas sold for double its high estimate at Phillips Hong Kong in June 2022, extending Rokkaku's strong performance beyond the Japanese auction market and into the broader Asian collecting sphere. Measuring nearly 2 metres wide, the horizontal composition allows for an expansive view of her fantastical landscape populated with her manga-influenced characters, from the central child-like figure to the blue elephant and dinosaur. The work features her distinctive ice-cream palette, connecting her to Japan's rich tradition of “kawaii” (cute) aesthetics while adding a contemporary, psychedelic sensibility that has proven particularly appealing to collectors throughout Asia.

Selling for £547,200 at K-Auction in Seoul in September 2023, Untitled (2018) extends Rokkaku's strong performance into the Korean market, broadening the geographical scope of her collector base across East Asia. Untitled (2018) is a prime example of Rokkaku’s signature kawaii characters. At first glance, these characters appear cute and innocent, but a closer look tends to reveal an expression of fear, anger, frustration, or insecurity. Their emotions sit in direct contrast with the bright pastel background, visually representing the two-sided nature of human beings, particularly women and those from minority backgrounds. Rokkaku uses her innocuous child-like figures to illustrate and discuss the challenges adults face in today’s society.

This earlier work from 2008 achieved £517,920 at SBI Art Auction Co. in Tokyo in May 2022, and is the only top 10 result for a work created before 2016. This portrait canvas differs from her typically landscape-format works and offers a more focused composition, focusing on a large-eyed, long-armed, colourful-haired female figure. The strong result for this 14-year-old painting suggests growing appreciation for works from formative periods in her career, when she was transitioning from self-taught outsider to gallery-represented artist following her discovery at Tokyo's Geisai art fair, established by Takashi Murakami, in 2003 when she won the Illustration Award.

Achieving £486,000 at SBI Art Auction Co. in Tokyo in January 2022, this metre-square 2019 canvas measuring demonstrates the strong market for Rokkaku's more moderately sized works. The square format offers a concentrated view of her dreamlike aesthetic, with swirling abstractions in pink, orange, and yellow created with her unique finger-painting technique. This direct application method, where Rokkaku works without brushes, produces tactile, intuitive compositions that maintain childlike spontaneity while demonstrating sophisticated colour relationships. This result, coming early in what would prove to be Rokkaku's extraordinary year at auction, helped establish the momentum that carried through subsequent sales.

One of three works on this list from 2007, Untitled (2007) sold for £481,980 at Phillips & Poly in Hong Kong in November 2021. At 2 x 3 metres, it stands as one of the largest canvases in Rokkaku's top 10 sales and features multiple female figures amid an abstract landscape, with a warm, golden palette. The characters are typically distressed or unsure, but the background landscape is significantly more simplified than Rokkaku’s later works. This piece gained additional prestige through its exhibition history, beginning with its display in Gallery Delaive, Amsterdam, before moving on to the Where The Smell Comes From exhibition in Bratislava in 2012. The success of this piece helped pave the way for the remarkable run of results that would follow just months later in 2022.

Selling for £468,429 at Cuppar in Beijing in July 2022, Rokkaku’s peak month for sales to date, this 2020 work marks Rokkaku's strongest result in mainland China. It exemplifies her characteristic style with vibrant, gestural application of bright pigments out of which figures and characters subtly emerge. The work's success in the Chinese market indicates the broadening scope of Rokkaku's Asian collector base beyond Japan and Hong Kong.

This 2007 work achieved £457,870 at SBI Art Auction Co. in Tokyo in March 2022. This acrylic painting features one of her characteristic female figures with an exaggeratedly large head, wide eyes, and fluid arms and legs against a pink background, demonstrating the more figurative focus of her earlier style. As with most of her SBI Art Auction sales, this result reinforces the strong connection between Rokkaku and her home market in Japan, where her anime-adjacent aesthetic feels both familiar and fresh. The colourful background of this work feels even more spontaneous than those of her later works, with deliberately child-like drawings, from scribbled rainbows to games of noughts and crosses.

Completing Rokkaku's top 10 auction results, this 2007 painting sold for £444,570, again at SBI Art Auction Co. in Tokyo in July 2022 - the same month and venue as her record sale. This work features a similar composition to that of the above piece - with a single female figure set against a background of spontaneous child-like drawings. Its success at auction in 2022, alongside Rokkaku’s more mature works, demonstrates strong collector interest in pieces from throughout her career. Works from 2007 appeal due to their formative influence on Rokkaku’s eventual style, while her later pieces demonstrate this style in full effect.