One of the most recognizable faces in American culture returned to the site of his making on Wednesday, when Lévy Gorvy Dayan sold Andy Warhol’s Muhammad Ali (1977) for $18 million during the VIP Preview of Art Basel Miami Beach. The painting—autographed on the reverse by Ali and once owned by Richard L. Weisman, who commissioned Warhol’s “Athletes” series—hung only a few hundred feet from the place where Ali became Ali.
That historical resonance was not incidental, according to the gallery. It was the point.
Over sixty years ago, in February 1964, the 22-year-old then known as Cassius Clay shocked the sporting world in the Miami Beach Convention Center when he knocked out Sonny Liston. The Convention Center’s own archive describes the moment as “a clash of personalities… a politically charged spectacle during the height of the Civil Rights Movement,” with Ali standing over Liston in a moment now “etched into history as one of the most iconic photographs ever taken.”
Warhol’s portrait—produced thirteen years after the fight—has become an iconic image of the athlete, who quickly became a global symbol of civil rights after the fight, and redefined what it meant to be a celebrity in America.
According to dealer Brett Gorvy, the opportunity came together with improbable speed. The work was consigned barely ten days before the fair, emerging directly out of the New York auction cycle.
“It all happened basically just a week after the sales,” Gorvy told ARTnews. “We realized we had this masterpiece at a moment when the market is driven by masterpieces, and there was this amazing connection to Miami.”
The gallery debated the usual matrix of options: auction, private sale, or fair. But the alignment of market momentum, historical context, and Basel’s high-net-worth foot traffic made the decision easy. “If there’s going to be a moment … a coming together of timing, market, momentum, and location, this was it,” Gorvy added.
To heighten the effect, the gallery kept the consignment quiet until the last possible moment. “There was a tactic, obviously—to announce it very quickly… a surprise,” he said. And it worked: the painting became a gravitational point in the booth, drawing both serious buyers and crowds of people paying homage.
Throughout Wednesday, figures with personal ties to Ali or Warhol’s “Athletes” series made stops at the painting, turning the booth into an impromptu memorial. Benedict Taschen arrived to photograph it, having worked on many books related to Ali’s life. Billy Weisman, the widow of Frederick Weisman, stood before the painting that had once belonged to her family. And Ali’s son Muhammed Ali Jr. and adopted son Assad Ali visited as well, Gorvy said, describing the day as having a “coming-home mentality.”
The proximity to the original fight only intensified the response. As the Convention Center’s historical materials note, the 1964 match was both an athletic upset and “a pivotal moment in sports, launching the career of one of history’s most legendary figures.”
For Lévy Gorvy Dayan, the sale also demonstrates the continuing relevance of the fair as a transactional engine—even in a cautious market. “One of the big issues galleries have had is: how do you get someone to fall in love with a work when they’re buying remotely?” Gorvy said. Showing the Ali painting “freshly, in a place where it’s a surprise,” proved to be an antidote.
Miami, he noted, has long been fertile ground for major secondary-market sales, with historic Rothkos and Lichtensteins changing hands at the fair. The gallery’s recent sale of a $25.5 million Gerhard Richter work in Paris only underscores how aggressively collectors are returning to trophy-grade works.
But nothing in Paris or New York could match the resonance of selling Muhammad Ali in the building where Ali rose from contender to champion, underdog to icon.
As Gorvy put it, “We all love a story with a great beginning and a great ending.” Sadly, Gorvy was nimble enough to block and slip his way out of revealing who the buyer was, saying only that the new owner was “a private collector.”
