The Top 25 NFT Artists You Should Know

NFT art is a trending topic in the crypto space. Experts believe that non-fungible tokens are going to bring many more innovations to the art sector from a commercial point of view. The world wouldn’t be surprised if NFT artwork is going to be the face of art sales in the future. In fact, NFT art is brimming with opportunities that many artists have taken advantage of. There are numerous popular artists who are successful and earn millions of dollars through their work.

This article will introduce you to well-known non-fungible token artists who can inspire your artistic side.

What Makes a Good NFT Artist?

A good non-fungible token artist will have some significant traits that will make them good with NFT art. Here are some of the aspects:

• Good understanding of the NFT community
• Partnerships with well-known NFT influencers
• Knowledge of NFT pricing
• Good NFT art sale graph
• Invests in good NFT codes

Top 25 NFT Creators of 2023 That You Must Be Aware Of

Beeple:

Mike Winkelmann, popularly known as Beeple, is a popular NFT artist based out of Charleston, USA. he started out as a graphic designer and moved to NFT artworks. As of today, his works include various forms of digital artworks, such as Creative Commons VJ loops, short films, everydays, and VR / AR work. 

His art style falls can be called comical, satirical, and dystopian. Beeple rose to fame when his painting, Everydays: The First 5000 Days, was auctioned for an incredible $69,346,250. This renowned artwork is a compilation of the images created by him from his first 5,000 days online. 

By the end of March 2021, he had sold 845 artworks for $113,544,319.92. 

Apart from “Everydays,” his Crossroad and Ocean Front fetched him $6.6 million and $6 million, respectively. He has so far worked for celebrities like Justin Bieber, One Direction, Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj, Eminem, Zedd, deadmau5, and many more. Overall, one may find his work absurd, but they are also highly realistic. His work consists of various digital shapes, scenery, and political illustrations (in a grotesque way). 

Pak:

Pak (or Murat Pak) is an anonymous artist who is prolific and possesses an excellent NFT collection. The artist is pretty much active on social media and is the super mind behind Archillect, the AI algorithm. Pak has 2.4 million followers, which speaks volumes about the artist’s popularity. 

This artist has some highly valued work, such as Cloud Monument Dark and Clock, which grossed USD 52.7 million and ranked as the single second-largest non-fungible token next to Beeple’s EVERYDAYS. 

So far, Pak has auctioned 1,691 artworks. His art style consists of monochrome, minimalist, geometric patterns, and code-generated images. Metarift, which was sold for $974,982.87, is considered to be the most successful sale of the artist. 

Fewocious:

Victoria L, aka FEWOCiOUS, is a young crypto-art surrealist who dabbled with art at the age of 13. They (FEWOCiOUS’ preferred pronoun) made $370,000 from an NFT drop on their birthday. Their style is surreal, with a posthumanist aesthetic. They use vibrant colors to create a psychedelic mix of images and text. 

So far, the artist has sold 3,104 works for a total of $18,175,346.36. The EverLasting Beautiful, which sold for $550,000 in March 2021, was their most successful sale. They also earned $370,000 from an NFT drop on their 2021 birthday, which fell on New Year’s Day. Previous NFT art sales by the artist were more modest: in September, an NFT for “She Makes Me Feel Alive” sold for $6,000, for example. Another, titled “Moment I Fell in Love,” sold in November for $25,000 USD.

Morgan Creek Digital co-founders Anthony Pompliano and Jason Williams commissioned an NFT artwork by FEWOCiOUS in December to aid New York during the pandemic. That was sold on Nifty Gateway for $23,350, with the proceeds going to the non-profit Food Bank for New York City.

Tyler Hobbs:

Tyler Hobbs is a Texas-based visual artist who primarily works with algorithms, plotters, and paint. He has had great success with NFTs. Hobbs’ average sale price for his NFTs is $100,729.15, with his highest price tag nabbing $122,421,149.94. “Incomplete Control” is Hobbs’ most expensive work. 

And it is all about letting go and making room for error and imperfections. Hobbs’ NFTs, which resemble art museum exhibits, are unquestionably one-of-a-kind pieces. His work mainly focuses on computational aesthetics. 

Hobbs creates and programs custom algorithms that generate visual imagery. These frequently strike a balance between the cold, hard structure that computers excel at and the messy, organic chaos that we see in nature. Tyler’s work has been exhibited internationally and collected in more than a dozen countries.

Matt Deslaurier:

Matt DesLauriers, also known as MattDesl is known for generative artwork. He is a coder based out of Canada who has sold 2,070 works sold for an average of $28,116.36 per sale. With a wide range of non-fungible tokens, from 3D moving images to geometrical shapes, MattDesl’s various works allow people with different artistic interests to enjoy his work. 

His most expensive work, Meridian, created landforms from many small strokes of color and sold for $33,322.66. Subscapes, a code-generated landscape, constitute a recurring theme in his work. 

Rich Lord:

Mixing geometry and unsettling realism, Rich Lord has sold a total of 1,423 artwork pieces, averaging $22,655.74 per sale. His animated NFTs are growing in popularity, fetching a watermark for Geometry Runners. The work features a semicircle rolling continuously forward in vibrant colors. This work is a bit different from his other pieces.

Lord has created animated NFTs that show legs walking in a circle, fingers morphing into different shapes and even a creature with eyes that multiply all around its body.

Dmitri Cherniak:

Dmitri is a programmer whose tryst with NFT started in 2014. He is well-known for his Ringers collection and experiments on geometric minimalism.  Even with the least amount of non-fungible tokens sold, Cherniak’s average sale is at $118,033.91. His highest sale was at $2,774,736.00 for his piece ‘A slight lack of symmetry can cause so much pain.’ The piece, which was coded in Javascript, is 1 of 4 algorithmic editions.

SnowFro:

Founder of Art Block, the generative art platform created to present and sell NFTs, Erick Calderon, known for his online handle Snowfro has moved up in the top NFT artist list quickly. Since its launch in November 2020, Art Blocks has received the attention of many people, including large names such as the auction house Sotheby’s. Snowfro has sold 3,017 pieces and is averaging $12,897.24 a piece. 

His most expensive piece, an edition of his Chromie Squiggle collection, sold for $13,075.99. The NFT features a squiggly line in dark blue tints, which Snowfro explains “each squiggle embodies the soul of the Art Blocks platform.” 

Blake Kathryn:

Kathryn is a well-known non-fungible token artist who made news for her collaboration on an exemplary Crypto Queen art piece with Paris Hilton. This art piece fetched her a whopping $1,111,211. Her artwork has a beautiful allure representing illusory and fantastical landscape exploration that is gaining attention on social media. 

Monica Rizzoli:

Rizzoli is a generative artist known for her Fragments of an Infinite Field collection. Her work encompasses a beautiful blend of colors that combines abstract with the real world. Her NFTs revolve around floral patterns and naturistic vibes. Her highest-priced NFT sold for $27,935.38 and is a part of the Fragments of an Infinite Field collection. 

The NFT image includes a few flowers, which Monica discusses have a few different variables—such as macro aspects that affect entire populations or micro aspects which affect each individual within that species differently. The themes of her art, both physical and digital, are impacted by the seasons, which play a significant role in her creations.

Xcopy:

Xcopy is a London-based artist whose artwork explores dystopia, death, and apathy themes. The artist is popular for the uniqueness which can be seen in their every artwork. The artist’s creation embodies flashing imagery. The artist has sold 1,907 artworks for $11,906,985.44. The artist’s most successful sale was Death Dip in March 2021, which sold for $2,111,470.

Kjetil Golid:

Artist Kjetil Golid has sold 3,301 pieces averaging $8,453.75 per piece. His most expensive piece was part of his Archetype collection. Sold for $32,633.93, it features a collection of geometrical rectangles and squares in tan and red. Golid’s Archetype collection has been described as both a utopian and dystopian world, with colors that are both bold, intense, and yet calming to the viewer.

This collection started as an algorithm for generating the possible partitions of a rectangle into smaller rectangles, in addition to exploring the use of repetition as a counterweight to unruly, random structures. It must be noted that a single element is seen as chaotic, whereas repetition presents intentionality that leads to complex and satisfying expressions. 

Kjetil Golid is a system developer and data analyst residing in Trondheim, Norway. Kjetil has a keen interest in algorithms and data structures, which forms the basis of many of his generative art pieces.

Piterpasma:

Piter Pasma is a generative artist and programmer best known for his “Two Cursors, One File” series. He is also the primary organizer of #Genuary2022, a month-long generative art project in which artists create daily works in response to 31 carefully selected prompts. By experimenting with codes and complexity, the generative artist is inspired by randomness in the world and uses this as his creative force. Pasma has sold 1,238 pieces of art with an average of $17,646.99 a sale. 

By creating sculptures and digital art, Pasma challenges the average art style and takes his work to the next level. His highest bidder piece, Skulptuur, was sold for $22,035.54 and featured an exclusive set of sculptures that have been carved to show infinite possibilities, rather than the common sculpture that features just a single reality.

SHVEMBLDR:

Founder of the TBOA Club, Shvembldr has sold 2,632 art pieces sold, averaging $10,455.32 per sale. His artwork looks like something seen through a telescope, with some pieces looking like planets in outer space. Portal 03, which was sold for $300,494.88, features a kaleidoscope image that is filled with many colors. Not only did the buyer have full possession of the NFT, but buying Portal 03 also gave the buyer membership into the TBOA Club. The club is a closed community filled with other generative artists.

Darien Brito:

Darien Brito is a creative coder and audiovisual artist who works with sound, image, and algorithms. His artwork features images and videos that look as though they were taken from outer space while also incorporating three-dimensional algorithmic images. 

Brito has sold 1,675 art pieces, ranging from videos to images, and his pieces now average $11,706.46 a piece. His piece, Pigments, an other-worldly art piece, was bought for $17,534.82 and incorporated an exploration of color and spatial distortion. A lot of Brito’s pieces are animated, so the viewer can experience the images live.

Alycia Rainaud:

Alycia Rainaud, originally from France, is a Montreal-based digital artist and graphic designer who is making waves in the NFT community. Alycia’s digital art collections are one-of-a-kind in that they explore deep human emotions to depict life’s complexities through daily abstractions. Alycia also creates digital artworks that are influenced by Jungian therapy. Jungian therapy is a form of meditation and creative self-expression.

Micah Johnson:

This Major League Baseball player-turned-artist entered the NFT space with Aku: The Moon God, a series of sculptures and digital art depicting a young black boy wearing an astronaut’s hat. With 8,851 total sales, Johnson quickly became one of the field’s most recognizable names. While his pieces average $2,526.55, his piece ˈSÄ-V(Ə-)RƏN-TĒ sold for $668,605.00. 

This image features an astronaut standing to the left of a door and two young African American boys standing on the other side of this door. Johnson mentions an encounter he had with a 7-year-old boy, Rayden, who believed he was not smart enough to be an astronaut. In response to this, Johnson created ˈSÄ-V(Ə-)RƏN-TĒ, and with every contribution that is made toward the piece, 100 percent of the money will be given to Rayden upon his 18th birthday. “For centuries, the black community has been the target of a system designed to limit their power, their earning potential, their dreams,” Johnson writes in the art piece description.

Maddog Jones:

Michah Dowbak, better known by his stage name “Maddog Jones,” is a Canadian digital artist, DJ, and keyboardist. Michah began by sharing his art on Instagram before moving on to NFT. His most expensive piece, “REPLICATOR (2021),” sold for 4.1 million USD in a bid. On the “Hypervision” collection, he also collaborated with other top artists, including deadmau5.

Zeblocks:

Guillaume and Sebastian developed Zeblocks in order to create and sell their own individual art styles. So far, Zeblocks has sold a total of 1,238 art pieces, with an average of $16,770.20 for each piece. The highest-priced NFT, titled Unigrids, is a part of just one of their projects. The Unigrids collection consists of 421 individual pieces, all of which are distinct and conceals an ingenious animation and a generated beat to improve the experience of the viewers.

Stefan Contiero:

Stefan Contiero is a contemporary artist who humanizes machines and digitalizes reality through generative art and creative coding. Contiero has sold 1,659 art pieces and is averaging $11,147.98 a sale. Frammenti sold for $13,764.42 (4.338 ETH), and Contiero writes, “Memories define us. Made of countless fragments, they are an ever-changing snapshot of our past”. Frammenti was inspired by “our most personal treasures” and is a digital explosion of life.

Grimes:

Grimes is a well-known musician in addition to being a multi-media artist. She sold a collection of ten digital artworks that comprises both unique and mass-produced copies. Her “Death of the Old” displaying a cross, flying cherubs, glowing light, and a sword got the highest price. Apart from this, her “Earth” and “Mars” are the other two works that got sold in thousands. 

Both works are short video clips pertaining to Earth and Mars planets along with a giant cherub holding a weapon atop it. Each of these works mentioned above includes original music. The artist has sold 1,122 works for a total of $8,793,359.30. Death of the Old, which sold for $388,938 in February 2021, was her most successful sale.

Whisbe: 

Whisbe, a skilled street artist, turned one of his most famous works, “The Vandal Gummy Bear” mugshot series, into NFTs and made a fortune from it.

In March of last year, his best-selling piece, “Not Forgotten, But Gone,” sold for $1 million USD. A golden skeleton of a vandal gummy bear holds a prison mugshot plaque in the 15-second video.

Luxpris: 

Josh Katzenmeyer aka “Luxpris,” is an artist and musician who produces amazing art with the help of code and technology.

The artist has been minting non-fungible tokens since 2020 and exhibiting them across North America, Europe, and Asia, along with digital displays in the global VR realms that connect them all.

He is intrigued by the issues that arise when working with machines. He is particularly interested in how technology enhances or undermines human autonomy, as well as how algorithms influence not only the creation, marketing, and monetization of artworks but also the future of social production and consumption.

Slimesunday: 

Slimesunday is a Boston, Massachusetts-based digital collage artist who dabbles with unusual sensual subjects experimenting and pushing boundaries of acceptable art in mainstream media. One can find his work in popular magazines such as Hunger, Playboy, Penthouse, Glamour, and Plastik. Furthermore, he has also collaborated with Grammy-nominated artists.

Slimesunday has sold a total of 6,508 pieces of art for a total of $11,734,586.58. Gunky’s Uprising was his most profitable sale, selling for $1,333,333 in March 2021.

Hackatao: 

Hackatao who is based out of Italy has an interesting name. The “Hack” in Hackatao represent the fun of going underneath the skin and uncovering what’s hidden beneath. While “Tao” stands for Yin and Yang, a creative dynamic balance. The artist addresses various issues pertaining to society such as humanity, environment, and cryptography, along with numerous references to symbolism, art history, and psychology. 

Her creations were hosted and auctioned on various non-fungible token platforms such as Super Rare, Nifty Gateway, Async Art, and Makersplace. Furthermore, she has been a pioneer in the crypto art field since 2018.

Hackatao sold 1,504 pieces for a total of $12,487,255.50. Kim Jong Un – “Dead and Alive” Edition, which sold for $321,967 in March 2021, was her most successful sale.

Jen Stark:

Her work has evolved from hand-cut to a generative digital medium, drawing inspiration from iconic paper sculptures. Stark was introduced to generative art through an Art Blocks project called ‘Vortex’ (on Ethereum), which features an interactive NFT collection of 1000 unique pieces created by modifying specific coding parameters. She has also created her own currency, $STARK coins, to encourage the formation of communities between creatives and their fans.

Stefano Contiero:

Stefano Contiero is the creator of the ‘Sentimenti’ series and a self-taught generative artist and creative coder. Before becoming a full-time artist, Stefano had years of programming experience and a diverse artistic background. He has also stated that his multicultural upbringing has had a significant impact on the type of art he creates.

Identity, sense of belonging, the past, the joy of living, and “memento mori” are recurring themes in his art. Stephan has sold 1692 pieces and earned well over 12 million dollars through various NFT marketplaces in less than two years.

Loren Bednar:

Loren Bednar has been working with generative art since 2006. He possesses both creativity and technical prowess. Loren was able to create several collections on the Artblocks platform after being given the opportunity to share his work as an NFT. His most well-known collections include “Parade,” “Transversal,” and “Phase.”

Refik Anadol: 

Refik Anadol is a media artist and designer who has been making art for over a decade. His projects revolve around data-driven machine-learning algorithms that generate abstract, dream-like environments.

Anadol transforms data into ethereal data pigments, which are then transformed into a representation of fluid-inspired movements. “Machine Hallucinations,” his best-performing NFT collection, is listed on OpenSea with a floor price of 2.55 eth and 821 items sold.

Jose Delbo:

Jose Deblo has dominated the NFT scenes despite having over 50 years of experience in the comic arts. His most recent collection, “Enter The Satoshiverse,” a collaboration with his grandson, Deblo, depicts bitcoin creator Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto as the blockchain’s superhero. Deblo sold 5000 copies of all his collections at the age of 87, proving that anyone can make it as an NFT artist.

Conclusion

As these top NFT artists have shown, NFTs provide artists with new ways to engage and connect with their fans while also gaining a stake in the crypto space. While digital art is still a developing art form, it provides new and exciting opportunities for all types of artists. Keep an eye on digital art NFT spaces and well-known NFT artists to see what happens next in this vital and rapidly expanding sphere.