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On Wednesday, Art Basel Paris opened for its official VIP preview, following Tuesday’s debut of Avant Première, a new invite-only preview for select clients. It was hard not to laugh a little at the signage for Wednesday’s event, still titled “First Choice.” One collector quipped to ARTnews, “Shouldn’t it be Second Choice?”
Top galleries had already logged a long list of sales by Tuesday evening, including Hauser & Wirth’s placement of a 1987 Gerhard Richter abstract for $23 million—the highest reported sale at the fair so far. But many said the new schedule functioned best as a staggered opening.
“I think this is the most successful Art Basel Paris to date,” Paris-based adviser Francesca Napoli told ARTnews. “Galleries have sold a huge number of major works on both days of the fair, particularly downstairs. This edition of the fair is going to prove crucial for the Paris market.” Napoli added that prices reflected a “balanced” approach to a “less speculative” moment.
Simone Subal, a senior director at Paula Cooper Gallery, noted—as many dealers did—that collectors returned to the fair for the official VIP opening.
“What’s smart is that the time frame yesterday was only four hours, which is not long enough for people to see everything, so they came back,” Subal told ARTnews. “It also takes the pressure off.”
Paula Cooper reported selling a 1965 red lacquer on galvanized steel Donald Judd sculpture for an undisclosed price and a Claes Oldenburg work for between $250,000 and $300,000, as well as works by Alighiero e Boetti, Yayoi Kusama, Giovanni Anselmo, Giulio Paolini, and Christian Marclay. The booth’s focus on Minimalism echoed “Minimal,” an exhibition now on view at the Pinault Collection.
A standout was Meg Webster’s Moss Bed, Twin(1986/2025), a sculpture made of moss that took the proportions of a twin bed. Gallery staff watered the piece, priced at $200,000, throughout the day—a gesture of care reflecting the artist’s themes of ecology and impermanence. Still available were a Sol LeWitt sculpture priced at $950,000 and a 1978 Jackie Winsor wire mesh sculpture for $350,000.
Tuesday’s event was marked by several sales in the eight- and seven-figure range, mostly at the usual suspects: Hauser & Wirth, Pace, White Cube, Thaddaeus Ropac, David Zwirner. Add one more to the list: Lévy Gorvy Dayan, which sold a 1988 abstract painting by Richter. While the gallery declined to provide the sale price, the work last sold at Christie’s New York four years ago for $27.2 million, on a $25 million to $35 million estimate.
The other top sales reported Wednesday included a $2.5 million Marlene Dumas painting at Zwirner, and a risqué $4.7 million Bruce Nauman neon, titled Masturbating Man, at Hauser & Wirth, which the gallery put front and center in its booth. White Cube reported selling Julie Mehretu’s 2007 painting Charioteer for $11.5 million, George Baselitz’s 1989/2003 sculpture Dresdner Frauen – Elke for €2.5 million ($2.9 million), and Luc Tuymans’s 2001 painting Bend Over for $1.35 million. Gladstone also said it sold Elizabeth Peyton’s 2020 painting Kiss (Love) for $1.3 million.
A Josef Albers work on view at David Zwirner’s presentation at Art Basel Paris.
Courtesy Art Basel
Neugerriemschneider’s Mirko Mayer told ARTnews that the fair was “running very well” so far, and that Wednesday’s opening was less crowded than the same event in 2024. He added that collectors seemed “more relaxed” following the Tuesday opening.
“We sold several good, big works to museums and private collections on both days,” he said.
The Avant Première event was not without its hitches. Mayer said that deciding who to give one of the six invites allotted to each gallery was “difficult” and left some of their clients “a little bit angry” if they didn’t get one.
Some emerging and medium-sized galleries in the second floor’s less-traveled alleys told ARTnews that the event wasn’t a boon for them: even the clients who received invites from these dealers didn’t always make it upstairs. “It was like crickets,” said one American dealer, who asked not to be named. The result, in their view, was a lost day in Paris. But by Wednesday afternoon, the aisles were bustling on the Grand Palais’s upper floors.
Upstairs, San Francisco’s Jessica Silverman told ARTnews the fair “felt like a true international meeting place for collectors, curators, and museum leaders.”
Silverman added that the gallery had a “great day,” placing two of Davina Semo’s bronze, suspended bells for $25,000 each. The gallery also sold Atsushi Kaga’s Nature’s Resilience (2025) for $125,000 and six other paintings by Kaga for $22,000 each. The gallery reported selling a dozen other works by Rebecca Manson, Clare Rojas, Woody De Othello, Isaac Julien, and others for prices ranging from $18,000 to $60,000.
An installation view of Karma’s booth at Art Basel Paris.
For some dealers on the second floor, like New York’s Andrew Edlin, who also runs the Outsider Art Fair, focusing on the fair’s long-tail helps. He noted that last year he brought a piece by Paulina Peavy. Advisor Vera Alemani saw it and introduced the work to Emanuela Campoli, who then, through Edlin, showed work by Peavy in her gallery in Paris. At this year’s fair, Campoli brought a Peavy and sold it, which benefits Edlin both monetarily and in terms of finding a new audience for the work.
Alex Logsdail, CEO of Lisson Gallery, similarly stressed taking the focus off the fair’s first day. “This is a five-day fair for us, not a one-day fair,” he told ARTnews. And it has started well. “The quality of people here is very high, and dealers brought great material,” he added.
As 5:30 rolled around, Brendan Dugan could be found at the booth of his New York– and Los Angeles–based gallery Karma enjoying a beer. He’d earned it: between the Avant Première and First Choice previews, the gallery sold over 12 artworks, including Matthew Wong’s White Wave, Black Sand (2017), for $3.5 million, Manoucher Yektai’s Still Life with “France-Soir” (1960) for $750,000, and Reggie Burrows Hodges’s Botanist Moon: Kelley’s Work (2024) for $350,000. Dugan is coming off a good fair at Frieze London, and he said that Paris has so far been even better.
“This feels like a new energy” in the art market, he told ARTnews.
