Art Basel Opens With Strong Sales Despite a More Cautious Market | Observer

The OG Art Basel has long been the main market test for not only the European market but also the global market. It opened to VIPs yesterday (June 16) with a mood far less bombastic than in years past. Spirits were high, certainly, but the audience was much more regional and selective. To combat what could be perceived as a contraction, given fewer visitors from the U.S. and Asia, the fair has tried to restore a sense of eager anticipation by launching a new initiative that kept selected major works unseen—no digital previews, no PDFs—until the fair opened to ensure visitors’ first encounters with the year’s presentations would be in person. And there are plenty of masterpieces waiting to be encountered, though it’s unclear whether these are Basel exclusives or will reappear in Paris. The top sale of the VIP preview day was made by Swiss powerhouse Hauser & Wirth, which sold a 1963 Picasso for a remarkable $35 million. The gallery’s booth, taken as a whole, has great range, with a Picasso plein air work paired with an impressive Lucio Fontana slashed canvas, a sought-after abstract Richter and a sculpture by Louise Bourgeois. By 4 p.m., the gallery had also sold a Cy Twombly at $5 million, a Louise Bourgeois at $2.5 million, a Maria Lassnig at $1.75 million, a Piero Manzoni and a Zeng Fanzhi at $1.5 million each, an On Kawara at $1.4 million and works by Ed Clark, Isa Genzken, Günther Förg and Henry Taylor at roughly $1.2 million each. Gallery president Iwan Wirth described the first day of the 2026 edition of Art Basel as the strongest they had ever had. Other reported sales included works by Amy Sherald at $850,000, Christina Quarles at $800,000, Rashid Johnson and Cindy Sherman at $750,000 each, Nairy Baghramian and Luchita Hurtado at €600,000 and $600,000 respectively, Charles Gaines at $595,000, Nicole Eisenman at $575,000, Lorna Simpson at $425,000, Zhang Enli at $350,000, Lee Bul and George Rouy at $300,000 and £300,000 respectively, Pipilotti Rist at $230,000, Phyllida Barlow at $200,000 and $50,000, Ambera Wellmann at $150,000, Uman at $120,000 and a smaller George Rouy at £75,000. Almine Rech also sold a Picasso—an Art Basel premiere—in the $6,000,000-6,500,000 range, alongside a painting by Serge Poliakoff (€600,000-700,000), a dynamic abstraction by Martha Jungwirth (€550,000-600,000), a ceramic by Pablo Picasso ($350,000-450,000), a painting by Ha Chong-Hyun ($400,000-450,000), a painting by Javier Calleja (€350,000-400,000), a painting by Youngju Joung ($75,000-80,000), a painting by Ji Xin ($65,000-75,000) and a work by Taryn Simon ($35,000-40,000). “There’s a really good energy at the fair this year, and we’re happy to have made notable sales on this first day in Basel,” Rech told Observer, noting how the new Basel exclusive initiative created some anticipatory excitement. The gallery also placed two sculptures by Leonora Carrington (€170,000-200,000 each) following the announcement, just days earlier, of a new collaboration between it, the artist’s estate and rossogranada to exclusively represent the Surrealist internationally. David Zwirner anchored its booth with a large Joan Mitchell from 1992, a small Rothko from 1968, a golden Judd from 1969 and a Chamberlain, along with works by Victor Man and Ruth Asawa. The gallery reported a strong first day, with primary-market sales led by an Isa Genzken installation in the Unlimited sector, which sold for €1.2 million to a European museum, and two new paintings by Victor Man, one of which sold for €1 million. Other first-day primary sales included three Josef Albers paintings at $650,000, $800,000 and $850,000; a new Luc Tuymans painting for $800,000; a Steven Shearer painting for $700,000; a Chris Ofili painting and a new Amy Sillman painting for $650,000 each; two new Lucas Arruda paintings for $280,000 each; a new Dana Schutz painting for $350,000 and a work on paper for $100,000; two paintings by Francis Alÿs; a new Lisa Yuskavage work on paper for $320,000; a new Suzan Frecon painting for $250,000; two Philip-Lorca diCorcia photographs for $50,000 and $30,000; works on paper by Al Taylor and Tomma Abts for $30,000 each; an Alice Neel print for $20,000; and six Wolfgang Tillmans works priced between $12,000 and $100,000. The gallery also reported a busy first day on the secondary market, placing works by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Joan Mitchell, Yayoi Kusama, Gerhard Richter, Richard Serra, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cecily Brown, Josef Albers, On Kawara, Donald Judd, Ruth Asawa, Victor Man, Dan Flavin, Cy Twombly, Sigmar Polke, Michaël Borremans, Francis Alÿs, Lucas Arruda, Mamma Andersson, Suzan Frecon, Elizabeth Peyton, Raymond Pettibon, Carol Bove, Yu Nishimura and Tomma Abts. White Cube also reported a good first day, led by Lynne Drexler’s Untitled (1960) at $2.5 million and Doris Salcedo’s Untitled (2008) at $1.25 million. Other sales included Cai Guo-Qiang’s large Blue Pine Forest No. 1 (2022), which occupied an entire wall with a price tag of $750,000, alongside a Tracey Emin painting from 2017 for £750,000, a sculpture by Antony Gormley for £600,000 and Isamu Noguchi’s Figure Emerging (1982/84) for $450,000. The gallery also placed Mona Hatoum’s Still Life (medical cabinet) VII (2026) at £185,000, Ibrahim Mahama’s Kulala (2026) at €100,000 and Sara Flores’s Untitled (Maya Kené 13, 2023) (2023) at $90,000. By Monday, the gallery had also placed an installation by Tracey Emin, Knowing My Enemy (2002), presented in the Unlimited sector, for £1.25 million. Austrian dealer Thaddaeus Ropac pointed out that there were fewer Americans in the aisles than in years past but clarified that what was more significant was the number of important collectors from across Europe buying very actively. The gallery placed several works on the VIP preview day, including Pierre Soulages’s Peinture 146 x 97 cm, 31 janvier 1954 (1954), which sold above $3 million, a stunning Helen Frankenthaler dated 1982 that sold in the range of $3 million and a Lucio Fontana, Concetto spaziale, Attese (1965), for €1.8 million. Also sold by end of day were Georg Baselitz’s Ach, Mädchen grün (2010), with an asking price of €1.2 million; a Robert Rauschenberg ($950,000); Sturtevant’s Warhol Flowers (1990) (€750,000); a Robert Longo homage to Baselitz ($750,000), alongside works by Frank Auerbach (€700,000), Antony Gormley (£450,000), Martha Jungwirth (€250,000, €200,000 and €100,000), ZADIE XA (£80,000), two other Georg Baselitz works (€85,000 and €70,000) and an Oskar Schlemmer (CHF 55,000). The gallery chose Art Basel as the venue to announce its representation of the estate of Leoncillo, one of the most important Italian sculptors of the postwar period, celebrated for transforming clay into a vehicle for the expressive ambitions of modern art, ahead of a dedicated show at its new Milan gallery in September. If the death of Georg Baselitz in April of this year translated into swift sales, the impact of the even more recent passing of David Hockney on the market has been palpable at Art Basel. On preview day, GRAY sold his Studio Interior #2 (2014) for $8.5 million, an iPad drawing from “The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate” series (2011) for $650,000 and Kenneth Noland’s No End (1961) for $2 million. American postwar abstraction sold particularly well on preview day, but with a new mythology and a more feminine inclination. Yares Art reported sales of Helen Frankenthaler’s Gliding Figure (1961) for $2 million, a Joan Mitchell work on paper from 1958 for $1.2 million and Larry Poons’s Toccata Mambo (2014) for $190,000. Dominating Gagosian’s booth was a monumental Henry Moore, Large Four Piece Reclining Figure (1972-73, cast 1984), measuring over 6.5 x 13 x 6 feet. While the sculpture will no doubt take some time to sell, the mega-gallery reported the sale of Willem de Kooning’s No Title, dated 1984, for a high seven-figure sum to an important private collection in Asia within the first hour. De Kooning’s more elegantly mini