Art Basel opened on Tuesday with early sales pointing to strong broad-based demand across categories, generations, and price points – from museum-quality historical works to emerging names. Prices ranged from a few thousand dollars to USD 35 million asking price for Pablo Picasso’s Le peintre et son modèle dans un paysage (1963), offered by Hauser & Wirth. Early activity reflected the international ecosystem that converges each year at Basel, including placements with major institutions and foundations across Europe, Asia, and North America. Here is a snapshot of Basel’s first-day sales.
Across the fair
Institutional buying was particularly visible at Unlimited, Art Basel’s sector for large-scale works. Hauser & Wirth, Galerie Buchholz, and David Zwirner sold Isa Genzken’s installation from 2018, consisting of repurposed airplane parts, for EUR 1.2 million to a European museum, while Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois sold Niki de Saint Phalle’s monumental Blue Obelisk with Flowers (1992) for in excess of EUR 1 million to a private museum in France. Art Basel Awards 2025 Gold Medalist Nairy Baghramian, the artist behind this year’s Messeplatz commission, also featured among the opening-day sales: Hauser & Wirth sold her Side Leaps_Spatial Compositions for EUR 600,000 to a Swiss collection.
Other Unlimited sales pointed to a continued appetite for ambitious work across a range of media, including Tracey Emin’s weathered beach hut installation, Knowing My Enemy (2002), which sold for GBP 1.25 million at White Cube.
Early sales were also reported across the Parcours, Statements, and Zero 10 sectors. A mask sculpture by Ishi Glinsky, Inertia – Here and Home (2026), on display as part of Parcours, Art Basel’s public art sector, sold for USD 50,000–75,000 at P·P·O·W to a prominent US-based collector with a private foundation.
In Statements, the sector for solo presentations by emerging artists, Gypsum Gallery sold nine works by Egyptian artist Hana El-Sagini, priced between EUR 3,000–10,000. ‘We’ve believed in El-Sagini’s work for a long time, so there is something deeply satisfying about seeing the fair respond so strongly – it’s the kind of reaction that tends to mark a turning point in an artist’s trajectory,’ said a representative of the gallery.
Sales at Zero 10, the fair’s global initiative for art of the digital era, included John Gerrard’s STANDARD (2023), a real-time computer simulation of a white flag rising from desert water vapor, which was sold by Fellowship for USD 500,000 to one of the most significant private US collections of classic and contemporary art. Additional sales included Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Pulse Aglomerate (2024), which was sold by Bitforms and Max Estrella for USD 180,000 to a private foundation in Ukraine.