Artsy Insider: The Must-Read Art Market Intel for October 2025

Welcome to Artsy Insider, your monthly digest of the key art market intel you need to know.

We’ve got a sharp overview of what’s to come in a hectic month for the European market—punctuated by major art fairs Frieze London and Art Basel Paris—where openings, events, and auctions tee up a packed mid-October fortnight. Below, we’ll highlight some key themes to watch as all this gets underway.

We also bring you the insights of a legendary art market figure, Jussi Pylkkänen—auctioneer of both the most expensive painting ever sold and the most expensive work by a living artist under the hammer—who shares what he’ll be keeping an eye on over the next few weeks.

And finally, we share exclusive data on the artists who have seen the sharpest surges in commercial demand on Artsy this month.

Hope you enjoy this edition!

Art market news

October in the art market is headlined by two major art fairs taking place over two weeks in two European capitals: Frieze London and Frieze Masters, which kick off on October 15th, and Art Basel Paris, which gets underway on October 22nd. Frieze is now in the 22nd edition of its London fair, while this year will be Art Basel Paris’s fourth iteration.

Each takes place alongside an array of other fairs in their respective cities. London will also host PAD London (design-focused), 1-54 London (art from Africa and its diaspora), Minor Attractions (emerging art, in a hotel), FOCUS (art from Asia and its diaspora), and newcomer Echo Soho (women-led galleries). Paris, meanwhile, will play host to Paris Internationale (cutting-edge contemporary art), Design.Miami (design works in a magnificent 18th-century maison), AKAA (art and design from Africa), and Asia NOW (art from Asia and its diaspora). That’s just the art fairs: Visitors can also expect a bevy of gallery openings, museum offerings, and auctions (more on that below).

While it’s tempting to compare the relative merits of the two headline fairs (and the cities in which they take place), the reality is that both offer different propositions that are worth paying attention to.

What to expect at Art Basel Paris 2025Since Art Basel launched its Parisian fair in 2022, Frieze has leaned deeper into its standing as a barometer of curatorial currents: a place to discover the next big thing, across categories.

Frieze London and Masters returns with more than 280 galleries and a curator-led focus. At the main fair, keep an eye on Artist-to-Artist, in which established artists (including Amy Sherald and Chris Ofili) select emerging voices for solo booths. There’s also a new section Echoes in the Present, curated by Jareh Das, which maps ties between Brazil, Africa, and their diasporas in art. And don’t forget about Focus, the fair’s long-standing section dedicated to galleries under 12 years old that is also ripe for new artist and gallery encounters. Extending that curatorial approach at Frieze Masters are Spotlight (focused on 20th-century artist rediscoveries) and Studio, highlighting living artists’ practices.

While there is plenty of room for discovery at Art Basel Paris, institutional gravity and blue chip artworks are what it’s best known for.

Art Basel Paris brings both scale and concentration to its second edition at the Grand Palais: 206 galleries from 41 countries will feature, including 25 newcomers. The question for the Paris fair this year is whether it will overtake Art Basel’s fair in Basel as the brand’s most important fair. Market observers will be closely watching the number of international visitors to the French capital, along with the quality of works on view, and how it compares to the Swiss fair.

This year represents what director Clement Delépine called the fair’s first “normal edition.” For the first time, it will take over the entirety of the Grand Palais, and it’s likely that galleries will once again bring their strongest works from their leading artists. Last year’s fair opened with the $9.5 million sale of a Julie Mehretu artwork and multiple seven-figure sales—evidence of the fair’s clout at the top end. But keep an eye out for the fair’s Emergence and Premise sections. The former is dedicated to emerging galleries and artists, and the latter showcases curated presentations that “transform our perception of art.” So, while visitors will be treated to some leading works by some of the world’s most important artists, they can also expect to add some new names to their watchlists.

London and Paris wouldn’t be bona fide art weeks without auctions. Tentpole sales will be held at Christie’s and Sotheby’s in both London and Paris, with Phillips also hosting a sale in London.

Auction houses have seen a broad sales decline over the last couple of years. For example, sales at global auction houses fell by 6.2% to $3.98 billion in the first half of 2025, according to ArtTactic. So you can expect these auctions to be tightly managed affairs, where lots are tailored to meet pockets of demand in a more selective market.

That’s why there’s an increased focus on tried-and-tested canonical names for this season’s headline evening sales. At Christie’s, works by Lucian Freud, Yoshitomo Nara, and Paul Cézanne are among the leading lots of its evening sale. Sotheby’s will hold a dedicated 17-lot David Hockney sale, along with a tight 27-lot evening sale led by a pair of works by Francis Bacon estimated at £6–9 million ($8–$12 million) and £5–7 million ($6.7–$9.4 million) apiece. Phillips, meanwhile, leads its sale with a pair of seven-figure works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, but one lot to keep an eye on is Sasha Gordon’s Drive Through (2019). The artist, who recently joined the mega-gallery David Zwirner, is one of the most talked-about young artists working today. Gordon just opened a show at Zwirner’s New York space to packed crowds and plenty of hype: expect the work to soar past its £80,000–£120,000 ($107,436–$161,154) estimate.

In Paris, the “Modernités” sale at Sotheby’s will span Impressionism to European avant-garde and contemporary art, while a dedicated Surrealism sale will focus on a category that has continued to see strong demand (details for both sales are yet to be released). At Christie’s, details from a trio of core sales are still emerging, but the auction house has teased works from leading 20th-century names such as Paul Signac and René Magritte. Leading the lots from its contemporary art sale is Georg Baselitz’s Doppelnachtigall (2009), which carries an estimate of €300,000–€600,000 ($350,334–$700,668).

The above chart shows the artists who have experienced the most growth in inquiries on Artsy from August to September 2025. Inquiries are messages from potential buyers about works they’re interested in purchasing.

Leading this month’s chart is Idris Khan. The British artist is known for his densely layered works across photography, painting, and sculpture that compress text and music into singular, charged images. Khan’s work is currently the subject of a solo show, “Over and Over,” at London’s Cristea Roberts Gallery, and last month it was announced that he had been commissioned by the Obama Foundation to create new work for the Obama Presidential Center, which is set to open in Chicago next year. Khan is represented internationally by Victoria Miro in London, Sean Kelly Gallery in Los Angeles and New York, Mennour in Paris, and Galerie Thomas Schulte in Berlin.

Following Khan is Jess Allen. The British artist, represented by Unit and Nino Mier Gallery, is known for paintings of meditative interiors—sofas, benches, empty cinemas—where pared-back compositions and shadows explore memory, place, and time. Earlier this year, Allen mounted a solo show presented by Unit, “There’s A World Out There,” at Château La Coste in the south of France, and her work was featured as part of Nino Mier Gallery’s booth at The Armory Show in New York last month. Affordably-priced works by the artist are also featured as part of the gallery’s presentation at the Artsy Edition Shop.

Few figures in the art market understand its top end quite as well as Jussi Pylkkänen. The former global president of Christie’s has hammered some of the most important sales in auction history, including the most expensive work ever sold at auction (Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi (ca. 1499–1500) in 2015), the first painting sold for a hammer price over $100 million (Francis Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud (1969) in 2013), the most expensive work of art by a living artist (Jeff Koons’s Rabbit (1986), in 2019), and the most expensive painting by a 20th-century artist (Andy Warhol’s Shot Sage Blue Marilyn (1964) in 2023). Pylkkänen left the auction house in 2023 and today runs the consultancy Art Pylkkänen, which advises collectors and institutions looking to acquire major works of art. Ahead of a crucial run of tentpole auctions, we asked Pylkkänen for his predictions.

What are some of the themes you’re keeping an eye on during the October 2025 auctions?

History indicates that the art world needs convincing results to encourage collectors back into the market when the global economy is struggling. Back in 2008, the doubts that came in the wake of the credit crunch were swept aside by the extraordinary performance of the Yves Saint Laurent sale at Christie’s in Paris. In my view, the Pauline Karpidas Collection at Sotheby’s London last month began to offer the positivity that the market needs to recover.

I predict that the London and Paris sales will perform robustly, encouraging excellent results in New York in November. The outlook for this autumn, largely driven by better works at better prices, is bright.

Earlier this year, Christie’s made the difficult decision to forego their summer sales and plan for the autumn. The strategy has clearly worked, yielding a roster of 54 quality works and fewer present-day works than in recent Frieze-affiliated sales—a sign of Christie’s desire for a more classic modern sale, and potentially a reflection of uncertainty around 21st-century works. The secondary market for less established contemporary art is fragile, and prices have generally settled down.

Instead of higher-risk names, the sale is full of established artists such as Lucian Freud, Pablo Picasso, René Magritte, Claude Monet, Peter Doig, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Coming from a host of private collections across Europe and America, these are the strongest London sales in October we have seen for a while.

The Christie’s Modern British sale is also impressive, and may prove to be the success of the season. It will feature great works by British titans in a Frieze week that will attract plenty of great collectors and energy to London. After focusing on the highly effective marketing of the Karpidas Collection, Sotheby’s has a well-priced, smaller evening sale of 27 lots, including two Francis Bacon oils, which should further buoy the art market.

The October sales always serve secondarily as a weather vane for the major New York auctions in November. The New York sales are already exciting, currently rumored to feature as many as eight significant collections. News is being gradually announced by both houses in order to generate maximum anticipation.