By the end of Tuesday’s VIP preview day, it was clear that sales at Art Basel’s flagship fair were noticeably stronger than in 2025, with plenty of transactions completing shortly after the doors to the Messeplatz opened. Yet, for as strong as sales were, dealers repeatedly cautioned ARTnews that this was not a return to the post-Covid days of frenzied speculative buying, but rather something more measured, particularly where it concerned the big-ticket works.
As collectors thinned out late in the afternoon, I was told by dealers more than once to come back later in the hopes that deals would close soon. To be fair, it understandably takes longer to place a monumental bronze sculpture like Henry Moore’s crowd-stopping Large Four Piece Reclining Figure (1972–73, cast 1984), measuring over 6½ feet by 13 feet by 6 feet. Similar late-career Moore sculptures of reclining figures have sold for as much as $32.7 million. While Gagosian, which was offering the work, did not provide a price, the piece was still available by close of business Tuesday. (Gagosian did report one sale, for a 1984 Willem de Kooning painting for “a high seven-figure sum” to an “important private collection in Asia,” per the gallery.)
The top sale of the day was by—who else—Hauser & Wirth, which sold Pablo Picasso’s 1963 painting en plein air for an impressive $35 million. The gallery said it sold 35 works by 4pm, including two paintings by Cy Twombly—On Returning from Tonnicoda (1973) for $5 million and Sperlonga Drawing (1959) for $2.5 million—and a Louise Bourgeois work, Les Fleurs (2009), also for $2.5 million. In a statement, Hauser & Wirth cofounder Iwan Wirth observed that Tuesday had been “as strong a first day as we’ve ever had.”
“People come to Basel for Art Basel, for the art, and not for anything else,” Hauser & Wirth president Marc Payot told ARTnews. “We have done great sales, with unbelievable potential for things that have not yet been finalized.” He said that while last year’s fair was also ultimately very successful, it took noticeably longer to close deals. “It seems the dynamic right now is stronger this year than last year,” with sales made earlier in the day, to a broad range of international collectors, including Americans.
A strong first day at Basel is not altogether a surprise, following on the heels of a robust May auction season that pointed toward growth and strengthening collector appetite, particularly for historic works and more established artists. The consensus seems to be that the market is edging out of a challenging period of correction. Exhibitors at Basel reflected that trend with presentations that showcased Modern and historic works alongside living and younger artists.
But questions still remain about how contemporary works will fare in a market that has also seen a number of gallery closures. “The middle market seems to be kind of forgotten,” Haily Widrig, founder of Art Partners Advisory, told ARTnews Tuesday. She noted that a majority of works on offer at Basel were either very high-value works (starting around $2 million and up), or on the much lower end (between $25,000 and $150,000). “There is more disparity in the market than in previous years. There seems to be a go-big-or-go-home attitude at the booths,” she said.
An installation view of Pace’s presentation at the 2026 edition of Art Basel.
Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
Yet on day one, dealers were comforted to find that contemporary works—albeit those by living artists with established markets—sold as much as their “safer” historic artists, sometimes even more so. By midday, Pace said it had sold about 20 pieces, mostly from its contemporary program, to collectors from all over the world. The gallery’s recently announced downsizing did little to quell buzz. The booth was thrumming with activity when ARTnews stopped by, as one staffer leaned over to CEO Marc Glimcher to announce that they had sold Larry Bell’s Glass Box with Ellipses (1964) for $475,000.
Marianne Boesky was having a similarly thrilling day, noting that most of the gallery’s booth sold, including a Mary Lovelace O’Neal painting from 1990, placed with a European museum for $1.5 million. She said the day had “one of the strongest energies I can remember” in 25 years of doing the fair.
Just days after the death of art legend David Hockney, New York’s Gray Gallery was offering several works by the artist, including a 2014 painting, Studio Interior #2, which sold for $8.5 million, and a 2014 iPad drawing printed on paper, which sold for $650,000. The gallery also reported the sale of a $2 million Kenneth Noland painting, No End (1961), and a marble Jaume Plensa sculpture for $550,000.
At Xavier Hufkens, a Louise Bourgeois sculpture of two floating figures embracing, titled Couple (2002), sold for $2.2 million, while three editions of monumental owl sculptures by Thomas Houseago found homes for $550,000 each, to name a few. On that note, Hufkens stated that “Art Basel remains the most important fair of the year… It starts strong, and it stays strong.”
With that, Hufkens appeared to echo what became a recurring theme for dealers at the fair’s opening day: defending the importance of the flagship Basel fair against claims it is being upstaged by its younger Paris sibling. “Art Basel confirmed again, it is the best art fair in the world, just in the sheer quality and the amount of great works. Paris is amazing, and I understand that Americans prefer to go to Paris… but it’s limited,” Thaddaeus Ropac told ARTnews. “Here, you can show big works, you can show bold works. It is just another scale.”
Ropac said the gallery sold Pierre Soulages’s Peinture (1954) for over $3 million, and Helen Frankenthaler’s Sudden Wave (1982) for around $3 million. On Tuesday, the gallery also announced the representation of the estate of Italian sculptor Leoncillo (1915–1968), whose three hand-sculpted clay columns in earthen, Giorgio Morandi tones were on view at the fair.
“It’s the best Art Basel in a couple of years,” concurred Ropac, though he said he was not surprised, “because 2024 and 2025 were not easy years for the art market.” Ropac noted that many of the top works in the May sales went to American collectors; Art Basel, however, was notably driven by European collectors, who were Ropac’s top buyers on Tuesday.
David Zwirner told ARTnews the gallery had made a total of 57 sales by late afternoon, including preview sales, which also outperformed its previous year at the fair. In 2025, a few high-value works had driven the gallery’s overall positive results. “This year is different because it’s so broad,” Zwirner explained, representing an estimated 40 artists. “That means there’s broad support for many artists that we have,” he added. The gallery sold three paintings by Josef Albers for $650,000, $800,000, and $850,000.
Zwirner also cautioned against confusing a decline in auction sales of young and contemporary artists with a waning interest in them. “The resale of very young art has slowed down, and that’s what we want,” he said. “The speculative energy out of the young market has disappeared. That’s great news. But the interest in our relatively younger artists… that’s been super.”
Georg Baselitz’s 2010 work Ach, Mädchen grün, which sold at Thaddaeus Ropac for €1.2 million.
This year, Zwirner displayed a whopping six art projects in Unlimited, the sector for monumental works, and by the end of the first day, the gallery had sold an Unlimited installation by Isa Genzken for €1.2 million to a European museum. He said the gallery had decided to take advantage of a newly changed rule for the sector, which, for the first time, no longer requires exhibited works to be sold as single pieces. Zwirner seized the moment and brought the entire 1993 Museum of Modern Art exhibition of Philip-Lorca diCorcia, and all 12 images by Thomas Ruff on the subject of September 11. He said that the shows would travel to Zwirner galleries after the fair. “It’s a whole new way to work here. You can actually present a premium show, and then take it wherever you want. I think we were maybe a little quicker than some of our colleagues that hadn’t quite figured out that that’s possible, and that’s also why we have so many projects here today.”
Other seven-figure sales on Tuesday include a $6.5 million Picasso painting at Almine Rech, a €1.8 million Lucio Fontana, a €1.2 million Georg Baselitz painting, and a $1.2 million Alex Katz painting at Thaddaeus Ropac; a €2.5 million Josef Albers painting at Sprüth Magers; works by Lynne Drexler and Doris Salcedo at White Cube for $2.5 million and $1.25 million, respectively; works by Frankenthaler and Joan Mitchell at Yares Art for $2 million and $1.2 million, respectively; and a $1.5 million Jonas Wood painting at David Kordansky.
On the subject of speculative energy, galleries spoke about how Tuesday’s consistent, solid sales rhythm seemed a lot healthier in that regard.
The first day of sales had been strong and “even” from the get-go, said Steven P. Henry, a senior partner at Paula Cooper. He added that there seem to be fewer speculators chomping at the bit these days—a trend that has been evident since the art market’s recent cooling. “For the most part, it’s a healthier kind of ecosystem,” he said.
With the speculators out of the picture, institutions have been much more active, according to Henry. There are more “opportunities” for museums, more selection, and also, crucially, more time to decide on acquisitions.
Cooper, like most of the galleries in the main sector, opted to participate in the fair’s new Basel Exclusive program, in which exhibitors hold back an important work to premiere when the fair opens. For its work, the gallery chose a 1960 flag piece by Claes Oldenburg, Lighthouse Flag Provincetown, made from scraps of wood he found on the beach. It was priced around $150,000.
Other galleries similarly chose top-quality works for their Exclusive reveals; the most expensive of which was likely Helly Nahmad’s large Picasso portrait Homme Assis (1972), priced at $30 million, and still available at the time of writing.
Upstairs, where smaller and mid-size galleries tend to exhibit, the energy was similarly positive.
Nina Bakhtadze, an associate director at Tbilisi’s LC Quessier, told ARTnews that the gallery had done “incredibly well” for its first time in the fair’s main section, having graduated from the Premiere category, where they showed last year. They sold several works in the booth, including multiple large-scale Ser Serpas paintings. Their excellent presentation included the video work “so many things I’d like to tell you…” (2020–2025) by Georgian artist Tolia Astakhishvili, which is already in the collection of MoMA PS1. Astakhishvili will also be featured in a new show opening Saturday at MUMOK in Vienna, called “Figure of a Child.” The gallery also featured a 1989 painting by historic Georgian artist Karlo Kacharava.
LC Quessier’s presentation was indicative of one consistent highlight of this year’s fair: thoughtfully curated booths that combined excellent contemporary works with under-recognized historical artists. Another standout presentation was London’s Arcadia Missa, which showed a series of bejeweled, delicate kinetic sculptures by the late German artist Irma Hünerfauth (1907–1998). Hünerfauth has never been shown at a fair before. Alongside her work, the gallery showed earthy-red-layered, organic abstractions painted earlier this year by Reina Sugihara.
