Emma McIntyre

Emma McIntyre was born in 1990 in Auckland, New Zealand. She earned a Bachelor of Visual Arts in Painting from Auckland University of Technology in 2011, then a Master of Fine Arts from the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland in 2016. In her early New Zealand career she showed with Hopkinson Mossman, building a body of abstract painting that mixes conventional oil technique with oxidation and iron-oxide processes, staining and reacting pigment into the canvas rather than only applying it.

In 2019 she received a Fulbright Graduate Award to pursue a second MFA at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California, which she completed in 2021, and relocated to Los Angeles, where she is now based.

David Zwirner announced her representation, in collaboration with the Los Angeles gallery Chateau Shatto, and she has since had a solo exhibition with the gallery in Hong Kong, described as her first exhibition in Asia, and a planned show at its New York Tribeca space opening September 18, 2026. She has also continued to show with Air de Paris in Paris and Chateau Shatto in Los Angeles, and remains connected to Coastal Signs in Auckland, where she is a founding board member.

McIntyre's rapid ascent has drawn attention from major art-market press. Artnet has covered her successive auction records through 2024 and 2025, Ocula has profiled her as a New Zealand-born, Los Angeles-based artist worth watching, and Artmag named her among its "Ten Rising Stars of Contemporary Art," noting her 2025 debut exhibition in Asia. Coverage has consistently emphasized her signature process, oxidizing and staining pigment into the canvas, as the defining feature of a practice that critics link to a broader lineage of gestural and process-driven abstraction.

McIntyre's auction market is new and moving quickly. In March 2024, If there is light that has weight sold for GBP 100,800 at Christie's London against an estimate of GBP 15,000 to 20,000. In May 2025, Up bubbles her amorous breath sold for USD 201,600 at Christie's New York, then a record for the artist. That record was surpassed in October 2025, when Seven types of ambiguity sold for GBP 167,700 (about USD 225,000) at Phillips London, more than double its high estimate. Her auction history to date is limited to a small number of results concentrated in 2024 and 2025, so each sale carries significant weight in setting her price level.

McIntyre has no catalogue raisonne, which is expected for an artist this early in her career, and works should be verified through David Zwirner or Chateau Shatto rather than any independent authentication body. Her auction record is short: only a handful of results are on the public record, spanning March 2024 to October 2025, and prices have risen quickly over that short window. That combination, a strong gallery platform and a growing exhibition calendar set against a thin trading history, means her market should be read as early-stage and volatile rather than established. No major museum collection holdings have yet been confirmed in public sources, which is a gap worth watching as her institutional profile develops.