Art Basel Dealers Report Strong VIP Sales, but the Market Still Looks Split
Basel opened with a brisker pace than many dealers had expected. On the fair’s VIP preview day, major galleries reported strong sales across Modern, historic, and contemporary work, suggesting that collector confidence has improved since last year’s more hesitant start. Yet the buying pattern also underscored a market that remains uneven: trophy works and lower-priced pieces moved fastest, while the middle tier continued to lag.
Hauser & Wirth set the tone with Pablo Picasso’s 1963 painting en plein air, which sold for $35 million. By 4 p.m., the gallery said it had placed 35 works, including Cy Twombly’s On Returning from Tonnicoda (1973) for $5 million, Sperlonga Drawing (1959) for $2.5 million, and Louise Bourgeois’s Les Fleurs (2009) for $2.5 million. Co-founder Iwan Wirth called Tuesday “as strong a first day as we’ve ever had,” while president Marc Payot said the fair’s energy felt stronger than last year’s, with sales closing earlier and drawing collectors from a broad international base, including Americans.
Other booths echoed that momentum. Pace said it had sold about 20 works by midday, mostly from its contemporary program, including Larry Bell’s Glass Box with Ellipses (1964) for $475,000. Marianne Boesky reported that most of her booth had sold, including a 1990 painting by Mary Lovelace O’Neal placed with a European museum for $1.5 million. Gray Gallery sold David Hockney’s Studio Interior 2 for $8.5 million, along with a 2014 iPad drawing printed on paper for $650,000 and Kenneth Noland’s No End (1961) for $2 million.
Xavier Hufkens said Louise Bourgeois’s Couple (2002) sold for $2.2 million, while three Thomas Houseago owl sculptures found buyers at $550,000 each. Thaddaeus Ropac reported a sale of Pierre Soulages’s Peinture for more than $3 million.
The day’s results fit a broader pattern visible in the market this spring: demand appears strongest for established names, especially historic works and blue-chip contemporary artists, while the speculative heat that followed the pandemic has cooled. As one adviser put it, the fair still shows a sharp divide between very high-value works and those at the lower end, with the middle market left searching for firmer ground. That tension may define Basel as much as the sales themselves.
