Inside the Art Marketplace, Elliot Safra’s Bid to Make Private Sales More Efficient

For all its mystique and opacity, the art industry still runs on a disarmingly simple premise: someone wants a specific work by a specific artist and someone else is willing to part with it. Everything else—the fairs, the dinners, the whispered previews and sealed-bid theatrics—is choreography around that basic exchange. But because artworks are singular objects and buying decisions are driven as much by psychology, timing and cultural literacy as by capital, the distance between desire and deal can be considerable. In a globalized market where supply is theoretically infinite yet access remains carefully gated, and where buyers have grown increasingly selective, finding the right work and the right counterparty—at the right moment and on the right terms (price, logistics, legal considerations)—is an art in itself.

Over the years, several platforms have promised to streamline this inefficiency, often mistaking a relationship-driven business for a tech problem and trying to automate it outright. But the art market remains, at its core, people-focused and grounded in conversation, negotiation and, above all, trust built through personal connections. Elliot Safra, founder of the Art Marketplace, believes he can make the art market more efficient without undermining its core principles. His buzzy new online private sales platform quickly attracted 14,000 monthly active users across more than 30 countries, with over 1,000 artworks submitted, the vast majority by private collectors rather than advisors.

Safra is no newcomer to the art market and its dynamics. Born in Luxembourg and raised in New York from age 10, he later attended college in Boston before launching a successful career in finance, working in management consulting and private equity. Yet at the height of his fast-rising career, in his mid-20s, he decided to pivot toward the art world he had long loved. “I grew up around art and always loved it, but at 25, I was this arrogant kid working at one of the top private equity firms and top consulting companies in the world,” he told Observer. “I remember thinking: it’s crazy that Christie’s and Sotheby’s are doing $7 billion a year in sales and only $50 million in profit. This is insane. I’m going to change that.”

With the audacity and tenacity of a young upstart convinced he could apply strategic and financial rigor to the art market, Safra persistently approached senior leadership at leading auction houses and ultimately secured a role at Christie’s in London, working directly with the chairman. During roughly four years there, he focused on long-term strategic initiatives and institutional innovation. He founded the Art+Tech Summit, developed partnerships with financial institutions and launched collector-facing programs aimed at engaging the next generation of clients—initiatives that continue to shape the house’s ecosystem. He later moved to New York to serve as senior director of global strategy at Lévy Gorvy, advising on expansion and business development at a pivotal moment for the gallery sector.

In the early months of the pandemic, Safra left the gallery world to launch his own venture, AndArt Agency, a strategic advisory firm designed to connect luxury and corporate brands more intelligently with the arts. The commercially successful venture remains active today under the leadership of Anna Stein, a former head of licensing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Safra brought in as a partner. Yet the model’s limited scalability prompted him to pursue a more ambitious project, ultimately leading to the co-founding of the Art Marketplace, where he seeks to apply financial discipline, technological thinking and strategic infrastructure to a market he has long believed could operate more efficiently.

The idea emerged from repeated conversations with collectors. “There are so many collectors around the world with incredible works on their walls. They might sell, but they don’t necessarily want to go through an auction house or a gallery. The process feels heavy, complicated or intimidating,” said Safra, who sensed there was room for a more streamlined and discreet alternative. “Platforms had tried before, but no one had really done it properly—with trust, structure and seriousness.”

The concept was developed in January of last year, and the platform launched in May after three months of beta testing with friends and family. “We had to figure everything out—contracts, KYC, escrow accounts and the mechanics themselves,” he said. “We did a few sales just to understand the process.” By late spring, the platform opened to a broader audience and ran steadily through the summer and fall. “By the end of 2025, we had done a couple of deals and said, okay, we understand how this works. This is real.” Last month, the company reinvested its profits into marketing and growth. “We put real money behind it. We said, let’s launch properly, and since December, it’s been booming.”

Initially, the platform was conceived as a global matching tool for advisors rather than a direct sales marketplace for collectors. “There are advisors all over the world looking for specific pieces for clients. If you’re an advisor in Hong Kong, you might have no idea that there’s an advisor in L.A. whose client owns exactly the work you’re looking for,” Safra explained. “You can’t possibly keep track of who has what.”

The platform was initially designed to function as a central repository where users could register both buy and sell requests, allowing the system to surface potential matches across geographies without requiring direct intermediary negotiations. Early versions reflected this structure, with sections for works available alongside listings detailing what collectors or advisors were actively seeking. Over time, however, Safra realized that the assumption underpinning the model—that buyers were primarily pursuing highly specific works—did not hold up. “It happens occasionally, but it’s rare. Most buyers want options. They want to compare. They want to see a few possibilities.”

Today, on the open-to-all platform created by the Art Marketplace, only the artist’s name, a short description (title, date and medium) and the asking price are listed. No images or identifying details are displayed; those are shared only when there is genuine interest. The Art Marketplace team oversees the entire process end-to-end, from vetting to shipping.

When asked why such a seemingly basic demand-and-supply infrastructure had not been built earlier, Safra pushed back on the assumption that technology was the barrier. “Honestly, the infrastructure is not that complicated. People talk about escrow, KYC, legal frameworks—we built all of that, and yes, it matters. But that’s not the differentiator.” Similar platforms have existed in the past, often with membership requirements or login gates. By contrast, the Art Marketplace was intentionally designed to be fully visible and easily accessible, without membership barriers to browsing. Safra recognized early on that such friction limited adoption and weakened loyalty.

What he considers decisive is not technological sophistication but trust and direct engagement. At its core, the system is little more than a structured database—but he and his partner remain constantly behind it, vetting each submission and actively facilitating negotiations. “I think this is crucial,” he argued. “I personally pick up the phone for every single person. Every seller, every serious inquiry. That human layer builds trust. In this market, trust is everything. Technology alone doesn’t solve that.”

He contrasted that approach with competitors who sought to build fully automated, A.I.-driven marketplaces, a strategy he believes misunderstands collectors’ psychology. High-value art transactions, particularly in private sales, are rooted in discretion, reassurance and personal rapport. Automation may be scalable, but in early-stage engagement, it rarely inspires confidence. “Collectors don’t want to upload a $2 million painting into a system and never speak to a human being,” he said. “We called every seller, explaining the model in detail. We walked them through the process. My partner comes more from tech, I come from the art and finance side, and together, that helped. But the real thing was just picking up the phone and building trust. We worked really, really hard on that.”

Safra rejected the idea that the platform relied solely on existing relationships. While his background provided early credibility, many sellers came to the platform through cold outreach and even Instagram. What mattered most, he emphasized, was sustained personal engagement. “We still spend most of our time on calls. That’s what builds a reputation. That’s what builds trust. Without that, it’s just another website.”

He recognizes the tension this creates. “Right now, we have around 14,000 monthly users. That means a lot of submissions, a lot of requests every week. Last year, I could get on the phone with almost everyone. This year, it’s much harder. At some point, you can’t call every single person. That’s the scaling problem we have to solve,” he said. Even so, he insists the human component remains essential. In his view, reputation and trust are the true infrastructure of the art marketplace’s business.

Structurally, Safra defines the Art Marketplace not as an advisory service but as a brokerage platform. It does not provide formal collecting advice or portfolio management, nor does it position itself as guiding buyers on what they should acquire. Instead, it operates as a private-sale marketplace connecting sellers—primarily collectors and occasionally advisors—with buyers seeking access to works from private collections. At the same time, the platform exercises curatorial discipline, declining to list works that are materially mispriced relative to market value.

All due diligence is handled internally, and rigorous filtering is central to the platform’s credibility. “We review everything—provenance, pricing, market comparables, condition, marketability. Most of the submissions we receive, we actually reject,” Safra said. “A huge part of my day is spent going through work, pricing it properly and making sure it makes sense in the current market. If something is unrealistic, we simply don’t list it. Then the other half of my time is on the phone, with buyers, with sellers, trying to make transactions happen.”

He describes the platform less as an automated marketplace and more as a structured gateway. “The platform brings in the pieces and brings in the clients. But after that, almost everything is done by hand.”

To preserve confidentiality, the company intermediates transactions directly. Once price and terms are agreed upon, the platform purchases the work from the seller and resells it to the buyer, ensuring the two parties never transact directly. Communication is handled primarily through direct conversations rather than automated messaging, reinforcing both discretion and the brokerage model at the platform’s core. “We’re building some automation in the backend, of course. But on the client side, it will always be personal. We will always pick up the phone. I don’t think someone feels comfortable buying a $700,000 artwork through a chatbot.”

The Art Marketplace manages transactions end to end. Once price and terms are agreed, the platform oversees contracts, escrow arrangements, logistics and shipping. Rather than merely connecting buyer and seller, the platform is actively involved throughout the sale, ensuring discretion and continuity. All this for a 10 percent commission, significantly lower than commissions across most other channels.

“We’ve become a great resource for buyers seeking hard-to-find works, as well as those who want to take advantage of opportunities where speed is of the essence,” Safra said. “These are not the types of deals you would find at traditional auction houses or galleries—and our commission is significantly lower.”