$20 million Joan Mitchell painting leads opening sales at Art Basel in Basel 2024.

Art Basel in Basel 2024 opened this week with an auspicious slate of six and seven-figure sales, led by the $20 million Joan Mitchell painting Sunflowers (1990–91) from David Zwirner. Per its usual schedule, the Swiss fair, featuring 285 galleries at Messe Basel, kicked off on Monday afternoon with the opening of the Unlimited sector, while the main fair opened its VIP preview on Tuesday morning, at which point a slew of sales began to be reported.

Mega-galleries unsurprisingly led the way: Zwirner, Pace, Hauser & Wirth, White Cube, and Thaddaeus Ropac, each reported a dozen or more sales on opening day. With many approaching the fair as the barometer for the health of the art market, the depth of early sales bodes well.

“In spite of the ‘doom porn’ currently circulating in the art press and along gossip grapevines, we are very confident in the art market’s resilience and the first day of Art Basel has confirmed our perspective,” said Iwan Wirth, president of Hauser & Wirth, in a statement to press. “The advantage of the market returning to a more humane pace is that the most discerning international collectors are committing here and now to the very best of the best. We’re happy to report that we have placed rare works that span our program and the cross-generational sweep of modern art history.” He continued, “We sold more works today than we did on the first day of Art Basel last year. And we expect [Wednesday] also to be very active—as busy on day two as the first day would be at any other fair. The moral of the story: true quality and great relationships always prevail.”

Indeed, Hauser & Wirth reported a bevy of sales, including 10 that achieved and surpassed seven-figure sums. Top reported sales from the gallery—which also opened a new space in Basel this week featuring a stunning show of the Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi—include the following:

• Arshile Gorky’s Untitled (Gray Drawing (Pastoral)) (ca. 1946–1947) sold for $16 million.
• Blinky Palermo’s Ohne Titel (Untitled) (1975) sold for approximately $4 million.
• Louise Bourgeois’s Woman with Packages (1987–1993) sold for $3.5 million.
• Mark Bradford’s Pink Pearl (2024) sold for $3.5 million.
• Jack Whitten’s Xzee III (1977) sold for $2.2 million.

In addition to the aforementioned $20 million Mitchell painting, David Zwirner’s top sales include:

• Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild (Abstract Painting) (2016) sold for $6 million.
• Yayoi Kusama’s Aspiring to Pumpkin’s Love, the Love in My Heart (2023), featured in the Unlimited sector, sold for $5 million to a private U.S. collection.
• Josef Albers’s Study for Homage to the Square (1966) sold for $1.6 million; and On the Other Side (1952) sold for $1.1 million.
• Joan Mitchell’s Untitled (c.1973) sold for $1.3 million.

White Cube’s top sales include:

• Julie Mehretu’s Untitled 2 (1999) for $6.75 million.
• Mark Bradford’s Clowns Travel Through Wires (2013) sold for $4.5 million.
• Jeff Wall’s The Storyteller (1986) sold for $2.85 million.
• David Hammons’s Untitled (2009) sold for $1.95 million.
• Tracey Emin’s Hellter Fucking Skelter (2001) sold for $1.45 million.

Thaddaeus Ropac’s top sales include:

• Robert Rauschenberg’s Market Altar / ROCI MEXICO (1985) sold for $3.85 million.
• Several editions of Georg Baselitz’s Dresdner Frauen – Die Elbe (1990/2023) for €2 million ($2.14 million), in addition to the artist’s St. Anna vereinigt Feld (2010) for €1.8 million ($1.93 million) and Bei Willem (2009) for €1.2 million ($1.28 million).
• Antony Gormley’s HERE (2021) sold for £600,000 ($764,250).

Stay tuned for our full sales report on Monday. Until then, find a selection of other major reported sales from Art Basel in Basel 2024 below.

• Xavier Hufkens sold a Leon Kossoff painting for £1.2 million ($1.52 million); a Donald Judd sculpture for $1.45 million; and a Louise Bourgeois sculpture for $1.2 million. “We bring our best to Basel and I am delighted to announce that by midday of the first preview day, many of our highlights had been sold,” Hufkens said in a statement to the press. “This is Basel at its finest.”
• Almine Rech sold a Javier Calleja painting for $375,000–400,000; a Tom Wesselmann painting for $350,000–$400,000; and a Vivian Springford painting for $150,000–170,000.
• Pace, in collaboration with Galerie Lelong & Co., sold three editions of Jean Dubuffet’s Banc-Salon (1970–2024) for €800,000 ($859,160) apiece.
• Sprüth Magers sold George Condo’s Rosemary’s Baby (2024) for $1.95 million; Barbara Kruger’s Untitled (Being and nothingness) (2024) for $450,000; Jenny Holzer’s Truisms: MONEY CREATES TASTE (2013–22) for $400,000; and Rosemarie Trockel’s Milieu (2022) for €380,000 ($408,101).
• Gladstone Gallery sold Jannis Kounellis’s Untitled (Wooden Rose) (1966) for $2.5 million and a painting by Elizabeth Peyton for $1.35 million.
• GRAY sold an Ellsworth Kelly painting for $2 million.
• Alison Jacques sold a Hannah Wilke sculpture for $1.25 million.
• MASSIMODECARLO reported some 17 sales including a sculpture by Elmgreen & Dragset in the range of €200,000–€330,000 ($214,900–$354,585), and its presentation of three paintings by Dominique Fung, which sold for prices in the range of $50,000–170,000 per piece.
• Perrotin sold a painting by Takashi Murakami for €700,000 ($751,765) and a painting by Ali Banisadr for €500,000 ($536,975).
• Goodman Gallery sold a 2024 William Kentridge sculpture for $600,000 and a Yinka Shonibare work for £250,000 ($381,500).
• Annely Juda Fine Art sold David Hockney’s Water Lilies in the Pond with Pots of Flowers (2021) for $600,000–$800,000.
• Galerie Nordenhake sold Stanley Whitney’s Bird Call (2024) for $450,000.
• Mennour sold a painting by Lee Ufan for $900,000; a painting by Zao Wou-ki for €380,000 ($408,200); two works by Ugo Rondinone for $370,000 and $351,000 apiece; and two works by Alberto Giacometti for €350,000 ($375,980) each.
• GALLERIA CONTINUA sold Anish Kapoor’s Prussian Blue (2023) for £750,000 ($955,987) and Julio Le Parc’s Zepelin de acero (2021) for €700,000 ($752,150).
• Lisson Gallery sold Lee Ufan’s Response (2024) for $850,000 and Sean Scully’s Wall of Light Green Mountain (2022) for $562,500.
• David Kordansky Gallery sold a painting by Jonas Wood for $650,000, a “Cylindrical Lens” sculpture by Fred Eversley for $550,000, a painting by Shara Hughes for $400,000–$450,000, and a painting by Mary Weatherford for $300,000.
• In the Unlimited sector, Torkwase Dyson’s Errantry (2024), co-presented by Pace and GRAY, sold for $380,000 to the private Brazilian museum Inhotim.
• Also in Unlimited, Mai 36 Galerie sold Matt Mullican’s Untitled (Computer Project) (1989) for $400,000.
• Lehmann Maupin sold Teresita Fernández’s Dark Earth(Groundwater) (2023) for $375,000.