Football’s Art World: Beckham, Mata, and the Players Collecting and Creating
The overlap between soccer and contemporary art is no longer limited to artworks about the game. A growing number of players have become collectors, curators, and, in some cases, practicing artists themselves, bringing their own visual instincts into the art world.
David Beckham and Victoria Beckham began collecting art in the early 2000s, assembling a group that includes works by Damien Hirst, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Sam Taylor-Johnson, Tracey Emin, Nan Goldin, Banksy, Yayoi Kusama, Yoshitomo Nara, Edgar Degas, and Claude Monet. Beckham has said he would have wanted to be an artist if he had not become a soccer player, and his presence at Art Basel Qatar earlier this year underscored how fully he has moved within art-fair culture.
Victoria Beckham has also used her retail spaces as exhibition sites. In 2018, she presented an Old Master exhibition at her Mayfair store in association with Sotheby’s. Last year, she curated another exhibition with the auction house featuring works by 10 artists, including George Condo, Richard Prince, and Yves Klein, with some pieces shown at her Dover Street boutique in West London.
Juan Mata has taken a different route, moving from the pitch into curation. While playing for Manchester United, he regularly visited the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester and later wrote about drawing inspiration from a Cai Guo-Qiang exhibition. That interest led to “Football City, Art United,” a project he developed with Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Josh Willdigg for the 2025 Manchester International Festival. The exhibition paired 11 soccer players with 11 artists, including Ella Toone with Keiken and Eric Cantona with Ryan Gander.
Not every player in this orbit is a collector or curator. David James has painted since his playing days and is known for portraits tied to soccer, as well as cats, landscapes, interior scenes, and a self-portrait built around a Notting Hill movie poster. The article also points to the long-standing artistic fascination with the sport itself, from Philippe Parreno and Douglas Gordon’s “Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait” to Adel Abdessemed’s “Headbutt.”
Together, these examples suggest that football’s relationship to art is becoming more reciprocal. Players are no longer only subjects or spectators; some are helping shape the culture around the game.
