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Arts

Top 20 best-known painters in the world · 🇺🇸 United States

Artists, world > country

Updated · Wikipedia languages (language editions)

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Why these 20

Ranked by how many Wikipedia language editions have an article about the person (Wikidata site links): a measure of how widely known someone is around the world, not of skill. It favours people from the past and from countries with many Wikipedia editions. Painters are people Wikidata lists with the occupation painter whose one-line English description calls them a painter or artist and not an actor, writer, poet, politician, architect, animator or singer, so famous people who also painted (presidents, novelists, film makers) are left out.

  1. 1

    Andy Warhol

    American artist, film director, and producer (1928–1987)

    179 languages

  2. 2

    Jackson Pollock

    American painter (1912–1956)

    118 languages

  3. 3

    Samuel Finley Breese Morse

    American inventor and painter (1791–1872)

    98 languages

  4. 4

    Yoko Ono

    オノ・ヨーコ

    Japanese artist and activist based in the United States (born 1933)

    98 languages

  5. 5

    Georgia O'Keeffe

    American modernist artist (1887–1986)

    95 languages

  6. 6

    Marcel Duchamp

    French painter, sculptor, and chess player (1887–1968)

    91 languages

  7. 7

    Mary Cassatt

    American painter and printmaker (1844—1926)

    90 languages

  8. 8

    Stephen Hillenburg

    American marine science educator and artist (1961-2018)

    85 languages

  9. 9

    John James Audubon

    French-American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter (1785–1851)

    77 languages

  10. 10

    Max Ernst

    German artist (1891–1976)

    72 languages

  11. 11

    Mark Rothko

    American painter of Latvian-Jewish descent (1903–1970)

    71 languages

  12. 12

    James McNeill Whistler

    American painter (1834-1903)

    70 languages

  13. 13

    Man Ray

    American and French visual artist (1890–1976)

    68 languages

  14. 14

    George Grosz

    German artist (1893–1959)

    64 languages

  15. 15

    John Singer Sargent

    American painter (1856–1925)

    62 languages

  16. 16

    Edward Hopper

    American realist painter and printmaker (1882-1967)

    60 languages

  17. 17

    Louise Bourgeois

    French-American artist (1911-2010)

    60 languages

  18. 18

    Alan Bean

    American astronaut and painter (1932-2018)

    60 languages

  19. 19

    Keith Haring

    American artist and social activist (1958-1990)

    59 languages

  20. 20

    Jean-Michel Basquiat

    American artist (1960–1988)

    58 languages

How it is measured

Wikidata: occupation painter (Q1028181), English description with painter or artist and without actor, writer, poet, politician, architect, animator or singer, 40 or more site links; country of citizenship gives the drill-down.

References

  1. Wikidata query: painters by Wikipedia language editions, Wikidata (CC0). Checked 2026-10-20 05:10 UTC.