First-day sales reports from galleries at the latest edition of the Frieze Los Angeles art fair indicate an abundance of enthusiasm. Enough New Yorkers escaped the snow to be everywhere in the aisles, and major California collectors and cultural figures were spotted in numbers.
“It’s a frenzy,” said clearly harried LA dealer Charlie James, standing amid works by Kristopher Raos, Manuel López, and other gallery artists.
“We’ve already sold three times as much as at the entire Art Basel Miami Beach in December,” said Niamh Coghlan, director at London’s Richard Saltoun Gallery, by early afternoon. “This is the perfect-sized fair,” she added, with about 100 exhibitors at the Santa Monica Airport. The gallery is exhibiting works by two Italian artists, Romany Eveleigh and Bice Lazzari.
Big galleries were making big sales, with David Zwirner placing a 2016 work by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Grandmother’s Parlour, for $2.8 million to a European foundation. The gallery had also sold a 2020 painting by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye for $1.5 million and two Lisa Yuskavage works for $280,000 and $180,000, among others.
Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Grandmother’s Parlour (2016).
David Zwirner Gallery
Thaddaeus Ropac, with locations worldwide, had sold Alex Katz’s painting Purple Split 3 (2022) for $700,000 by 4 p.m., along with David Salle’s painting The Green Vest (2025) for $280,000, Liza Lou’s Hypotaxis (2025) for $225,000, and Joan Snyder’s multimedium Howl/Heart (2011) for $140,000, just to note their six-figure sales. “There’s been strong attendance today and a good energy,” said Ropac in an email. “Largely collectors from the US, and institutional representatives in town too.”
Alex Katz, Purple Split (2022).
Thaddaeus Ropac
Karma Gallery (New York and West Hollywood) was strong out of the gate, selling Jonas Wood’s Poppies 5, Poppies 6, Poppies 7 (2024) within the first hours of the fair for $650,000. Nicolas Party’s painting Sunset (2025) went for $150,000; Ann Craven’s Moon (July, Quiet) (2025) for $140,000, and Jane Dickson’s Wonder Wheel (2014) for $100,000, among other works.
“We’ve gotten a few on the scoreboard,” said Eric Gleason, co-founder of New York’s Olney Gleason, before noon, not two hours into the VIP day. By 4 p.m., the gallery had sold four of the five presented paintings by Kour Pour (priced as high as $65,000) and a sculpture by Bosco Sodi ($72,000).
Olney Gleason’s presentation of paintings by Kour Pour and sculptures by Bosco Sodi.
Bass Art Imaging
“It’s been quite the day,” said Stefano DiPaola, partner and senior director at Anat Ebgi, of LA and New York, which was offering a selection of the gallery’s artists. “We’ve placed work by pretty much every artist in the booth, and multiples of some,” he said. The big news was the sale for $11,000 of a piece by Jessica Taylor Bellamy to LA’s California African American Museum through an acquisition fund established by the museum and the fair. Other works were priced as high as $100,000, for a 1977 Faith Wilding painting.
Jessica Taylor Bellamy, Linear Burn (2025).
Courtesy the artist and Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles / New York. Photo: Mason Kuehler.
“It’s been really, really good,” said Ermanno Rivetti, director at Almine Rech Gallery (locations worldwide), ticking off sales by works by artists including Joe Andoe, Aaron Curry, Eva Juszkiewicz, and Alexandre Lenoir, at prices ranging from $50,000 to more than $850,000 (for the Juszkiewicz). The aisles were even more crowded than last year, Rivetti observed, when all the talk was that the art world had turned out in force to support LA after the devastating wildfires.
Nicolas Party, Sunset (2025).
Karma
Lisson Gallery CEO Alex Logsdail was on the same page, saying, “There are a lot more people here than I even would have expected, but with LACMA reopening, the Broad expanding, and the Lucas Museum opening, there’s a case to be made that this is LA’s moment.” By 4 p.m., the gallery reported sales of works by artists including Kelly Akashi, Olga de Amaral, Hugh Hayden, Carmen Herrera, and Leiko Ikemura.
Los Angeles dealer Esther Kim Varet, founder of gallery Various Small Fires, said she had come out ahead on her booth before the fair even opened. She’s showing paintings by 86-year-old Jessie Homer French, with a floor-standing screen painted with forest fires tagged at $90,000 and paintings at $35,000 to $68,000. Kim Varet is also running for Congress in California’s 40th district, where she says she’s running neck-and-neck with both Republican incumbents in a recently reshuffled district. “Never underestimate an unhinged mom,” she said. “It feels really good to be fighting for something right now.”
A standing screen painted by Jessie Homer French, at Various Small Fires.
Various Small Fires. Photo: Evan Bedford
Top collectors including Miami’s Jason Rubell, ARTnews Top 200 collectors Jill and Peter Kraus from New York, and LA’s Lynda Resnick were on the prowl, as were museum trustee groups, LACMA director Michael Govan, and, according to dealers, some big fish from Silicon Valley. This being LA, naturally, the celebrity shoppers were getting people’s attention. Actors Fiona Shaw, Timothy Olyphant, Christoph Waltz, and Emma Watson were spotted, as was François Arnaud of the hit gay hockey series Heated Rivalry.
If LA’s actors were out, the distinctive geography and culture of Los Angeles was on view in a number of presentations. LA’s Fernberger gallery, founded in 2024 by Emma Fernberger, is showing two eleven-foot-wide landscape paintings overlooking the city from an elevated point, by lifelong Angelena Greta Waller (who also has a day job as a paramedic). They’re tagged at $85,000 each. For the artist, an affection for the city and outrage at its recent travails, especially immigration raids by ICE, is embedded in the paint.
Casemore and Yancey Richardson’s joint presentation of photos by Larry Sultan.
Casemore/Yancey Richardson
San Francisco’s Casemore Gallery, in partnership with New York’s Yancey Richardson, offers a spicier take on LA’s unique culture with photos from Larry Sultan’s series “The Valley,” shot in the late 1990s and early 200s behind the scenes on sets for pornographic films, which Casemore associate director Janie Perez-Radler described as fusing elements of documentary and fantasy. They’re priced between $23,000 and $65,000, and three sold in the fair’s first hour, with another placed by day’s end.
David Kordansky Gallery, of New York and Los Angeles, rounded up a number of six-figure sales by day’s end, topped by Jonas Wood’s painting Bonsai #12 (2025), for $600,000, tailed by Shara Hughes’s Swirl (2025), for $340,000, Mary Weatherford’sSunrise, Venus (2026), for $300,000, and Adam Pendleton’s Black Dada (A), from 2025–26, for $275,000, along with other pieces for north of $100,000 by Jennifer Guidi, Ron Gorchov, and Sayre Gomez.
International dealers, quizzed about whether the recent Supreme Court decision striking down Donald Trump’s extensive regime of tariffs, were sanguine. Daniel Roesler of Brazil’s Nara Roesler noted that the news hasn’t really affected the art world that much. “Art is treated as information,” he noted, “and information isn’t tariffable.” People are more concerned about even coming to the U.S. from abroad, he said, in the light of violent immigration crackdowns and challenges obtaining visas under the current administration.
“No one really schedules gallery meetings based on what Trump says,” said another dealer from a gallery with locations worldwide, who didn’t want to be identified for fear of alienating U.S. officials.
Heading into the fair, there was a certain amount of concern among Angelenos about the state of the art market when the entertainment industry is suffering, but that wasn’t easily detectable on day one. Why is one edition of a fair so much more successful than a previous one, was the question on the mind of one dealer who asked not to be identified. “Everyone brings the same stuff, so why is one year different than the previous? I think there’s a lot more randomness than anyone wants to admit.”
