The Phantom Painter: Visio Caeca’s Work Sells for €100,000 — and No One Knows Who He Is

Art Review International, November 2025 – No one remembers the moment Visio Caeca began to paint. 

There are no photographs, no interviews, no trace of his beginnings —only the paintings themselves, which seem to arrive from somewhere between dream and silence. Yet this week, one of those elusive works was sold for €100,000 at a private auction in Berlin, propelling the anonymous artist into international conversation.

A Sale Shrouded in Mystery

The painting, simply titled Untitled (Visio Caeca No. 17), was purchased by an Asian collector who described the piece as “a window into absence.” Measuring just under one meter wide, the canvas is a field of pale grey and whispering texture — a surface that appears to breathe, almost alive with unseen movement.

No one knows how many works exist, nor where they are created. The artist communicates only through handwritten notes delivered to galleries, signed with his mark: an unblinking eye crossed by a single line.

“To See Without Sight”

Visio Caeca is not a name but a declaration. Translating to “blind vision,” it encapsulates the artist’s guiding philosophy — that true perception begins where ordinary sight ends.

In one of his rare written statements, he explains:

“I paint as one who perceives the invisible — the trembling line between the seen and the unspeakable. Each canvas is not painted but remembered.”

His world is populated by faceless