Edgar Plans Hopes His Cute Characters Will Soar as Art Toys

The Spanish artist Edgar Plans, whose bug-eyed characters are a huge hit in Asia, is trending on HENI News.

Edgar Plans’ HENI Score, a unique artist’s sentiment index, has skyrocketed 161% after a slew of auction sales of his faux naif paintings. Sales of Plans’ colorful characters have totaled more than $43m over the past two years. See Edgar Plan’s HENI Dashboard to find out more about the artist and gain a greater insight into his market.

Notable sales include his Mouse Machine Jazz (2008), which sold for $1.98m at Sotheby’s Online, more than 44 times its upper estimate. More typically,Coffee Lover (2021) sold at Phillips, Hong Kong, for $38,000, still more than two and a half times its upper estimate.

Born in Madrid in 1977, and based in Gijon, northern Spain, Plans’ father was a well-known author of science-fiction and fantasy stories in Spain. Edgar Plans’ signature works are characterized by colorful and endearing characters, often depicting animals and fantastical creatures in a whimsical, child-like manner. Like KAWS before him, Plans characters are available as collectables. Recently released art toys are based on his NFT series “Lil' Heroes”.

Plans had his first solo show at Almine Rech, Brussels, in early 2022, which featured his child-like paintings. He is also represented by Woaw gallery, Hong Kong.He has said: “I've always liked street art. Urban art. It is an art that I see very free, just like when children create. And I have wanted to transform it to translate into my paintings.” While painting in a naif style, Plans studied art history at university.

The artist’s cute aesthetic caught the eye of the Hong Kong-based curator Matt Chung, an early fan, who told Artnet News: “When I saw [Plans' work] I thought that was the kind of style that Asian audiences would react to as it’s cartoonish but it has an artistic touch.”