Art Market Dynamics

Isabel Causadias, Professor, University of Barcelona, Spain

On 17 September 2025, during the 33rd ENCATC Congress in Barcelona, the ENCATC Art Talk turned to the dynamics of the art market in Barcelona and Catalonia. Isabel Causadias presented research on the city's lively but little-studied low-end art market. Based on a mixed-method study combining fieldwork, interviews and spatial mapping, she showed how trust acts as an invisible infrastructure that sustains exchange, often more than formal institutions do. Her findings suggest that artists, gallerists and buyers build credibility through physical proximity, repeated collaboration and openness about their processes, and that proximity networks, transparent pricing and relational work help to keep the market stable despite limited resources.