The world’s largest and most important art fair, Art Basel, opened earlier this week in the Swiss city, marking the marquee fair’s first in-person event in Europe since the start of the pandemic. Because of travel restrictions, fewer collectors from the United States and Asia made the journey to Europe, but that didn’t stop the world’s top galleries from making major sales. Below a look at some of what has sold at the fair so far.
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Barbara Hepworth at Pace Gallery
Image Credit: ©Bowness, Hepworth Estate; Photo: Phoebe d'Heurle, courtesy Pace Gallery Sculptor Barbara Hepworth, who is the subject of a recent biography by Eleanor Clayton published by Thames & Hudson, was among the artists whose work sold at Pace Gallery’s booth at Art Basel this year. Her nearly-five-foot-tall bronze sculpture Single Form (Eikon), designed in 1937–38 and cast in 1963, sold for $1.2 million. The gallery also sold works by Jeff Koons, Alexander Calder, Lee Ufan, and others.
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Philip Guston at Hauser & Wirth
Image Credit: ©The Estate of Philip Guston/Courtesy the Estate and Hauser & Wirth Among the 20-plus works sold by Hauser & Wirth at Art Basel this year, Philip Guston’s 1975 painting The Poet was by far one of the most expensive in the gallery’s booth—and likely one of the highest-ticket works anywhere in the fair. It sold for $6.5 million. In an email, gallery cofounder Iwan Wirth said, “Art Basel is back in full force. Collectors at the fair have renewed energy to be back with art of incredible caliber.”
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Keith Haring at Gladstone Gallery
Image Credit: ©Keith Haring Foundation/Courtesy the Keith Haring Foundation and Gladstone Gallery The late artist Keith Haring is known for his minimally drawn human figures that are often seen in various states of motion. This 1982 untitled painting, made from enamel and Day-Glo paint on metal, shows four of Haring’s brightly hued figures running across a much larger one whose body forms a sort of bridge. Gladstone Gallery sold the painting for a price in the range of $5 million–$5.5 million.
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Kerry James Marshall at David Zwirner
Image Credit: ©Kerry James Marshall/Courtesy the artist and David Zwirne Kerry James Marshall’s European representative sold a new piece by the Chicago-based artist, titled Black and Part Black Birds in America: (European Starlings), for $2.8 million, a high price for a contemporary artist on the primary market. (Marshall’s auction record is currently $21.1 million, set in 2018 when his 1997 work Past Times was bought at Sotheby’s by Sean Combs.) Also sold by Zwirner at the fair was an untitled 1974 sculpture by Dan Flavin, which was presented in Art Basel’s Unlimited section and sold for $3 million.
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Mary Weatherford at David Kordansky
Image Credit: Photo: Fredrik Nilsen Studio/Courtesy David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles Los Angeles–based David Kordansky Gallery had on offer two recent works by Mary Weatherford, both of which sold for $400,000 a piece. Made in the months following a series of solo shows at the Tang Teaching Museum in upstate New York, SITE Santa Fe in New Mexico, and the Aspen Art Museum in Colorado, these works combine Weatherford’s signature abstract painting with neon lights to refer to “the environments, moods, and geological vicissitudes of Hawaii,” according to a release. In an email, Kurt Mueller, a director at Kordansky, said, “As a gallery, we’ve been waiting to return to in-person fairs for nearly two years—the occasion at Basel was marked by incredible energy from attendees and numerous familiar faces.”
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Robert Rauschenberg at Thaddaeus Ropac
Image Credit: Photo: Glenn Steigelman/©2021 Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and ARS, New York/Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac This dense and layered canvas from 1984 by Robert Rauschenberg, titled Rollings (Salvage), presents various appropriated images from pop culture in a grid-like pattern. It was presented by Thaddaeus Ropac in Art Basel’s Unlimited selection, and the gallery sold it to a European museum for $4.5 million.
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Mark Bradford at White Cube
Image Credit: ©Mark Bradford/Courtesy the artist and White Cube Mark Bradford’s Kryptonite (2006), which was bought for $4.95 million, was among several works sold by White Cube gallery at the fair this year. The gallery also made important sales by artists like David Hammons, Theaster Gates, Park Seo-Bo, and Isamu Noguchi. In an email, Daniela Gareh, the gallery’s global sales director, said, “We are delighted to be back in Basel and it has been wonderful to reconnect with valued colleagues and friends, many of those whom we have missed over the past months.”
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Sheila Hicks at Alison Jacques
Image Credit: Photo: Michael Brzezinski/©Sheila Hicks/Courtesy Alison Jacques, London London’s Alison Jacques gallery had on offer several works by women artists, including this new work by Sheila Hicks, titled Lianes Magistral (2021), which sold for $600,000. The piece presents Hicks’s signature bands of colored linen and cotton. The gallery also sold a painting by Dorothea Tanning, Project for a Fainting (1979), for $350,000.
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Meleko Mokgosi at Gagosian and Jack Shainman
Image Credit: ©Meleko Mokgosi Meleko Mokgosi’s monumental 21-panel installation Bread, Butter, and Power (2018) was co-presented by Gagosian gallery and New York’s Jack Shainman Gallery in the fair’s Unlimited section. It sold for $750,000 to a U.S. collector. This panel shows two women, one sitting on the other’s lap, surrounded by various iconography related to Black empowerment, including a picture of Angela Davis and a poster reading “They will never kill us all.” Speaking about the fair in general, Gagosian COO Andrew Fabricant said, “The uncertainty that we arrived with was quickly replaced with optimism and the joy of seeing both familiar faces and new collectors. … We came into the fair with no expectations and the results have far outweighed anything we could have ever anticipated.”