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.

Basel Exclusive

Anticipation was high for the inaugural Basel Exclusive, the fair’s new initiative for unveiling previously undisclosed key artworks during the VIP opening, with several of these works among the earliest reported sales.

Almine Rech sold a Pablo Picasso painting for USD 6–6.5 million, while Sprüth Magers placed a work from John Baldessari’s ‘Emoji’ series, INT. FRANK’S PENTHOUSE – EVENING BOBBY Reverse close-up (2017), with a European private collection for USD 500,000.

Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel reported a series of sales for works by Brazilian artists including Marina Rheingantz’s Pé do Ouvido (2026) for USD 80,000, Antonio Tarsis’s Untitled (The colour side of the flames) for USD 32,000, and Marcia Falcão’s Malandra não Para XXXVII (2026) for USD 27,000. At Casey Kaplan, Patricia Fernández Carcedo's presentation – including a Basel Exclusive work – sold out.

Strength at the top

The market’s resilience at the top end was evident, with major works by Pablo Picasso, Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Josef Albers, David Hockney, and Louise Bourgeois finding buyers in the opening hours of the fair.

Hauser & Wirth reported that it had sold 35 works by 4pm on Tuesday, led by Picasso’s vibrant 1963 oil-on-canvas Le peintre et son modèle dans un paysage (1963), offered with an asking price of USD 35 million. The gallery also reported the sale of two works on paper by Cy Twombly: On Returning from Tonnicoda (1973) for USD 5 million and Sperlonga Drawing (1959) for USD 2.5 million, alongside Bourgeois’s Les Fleurs (2009) for USD 2.5 million. ‘The first day of Art Basel 2026 has been stellar for Hauser & Wirth,’ said Iwan Wirth, the gallery’s president, ‘as strong a first day as we’ve ever had.’

Further major sales underscored the depth of demand for museum-quality 20th-century works of art. Gagosian sold a 1984 de Kooning oil on canvas for a high seven-figure sum to an important private collection in Asia within the first hour. Gray sold two works by Hockney: the painting Studio Interior #2 (2014) for USD 8.5 million and an iPad drawing from ‘The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate’ series for USD 650,000.

Sales at Thaddaeus Ropac included Pierre Soulages’s Peinture 146 x 97 cm, 31 janvier 1954 for more than USD 3 million and also Sudden Wave (1982) in the region of USD 3 million by Helen Frankenthaler who is currently the subject of a major retrospective at Kunstmuseum Basel.

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. 

Breadth across all segments

Reported activity extended well beyond the top tier, reaching across established and emerging galleries and a wide range of price points. Demand for work by American painter Loie Hollowell was reflected in sales at two galleries, with Pace Gallery and Jessica Silverman each selling paintings for USD 450,000.

Galerie Cécile Fakhoury sold two works by Senegalese painter Souleymane Keïta in the EUR 27,000–65,000 range, one to a private collector and one to a foundation.

New York gallery Berry Campbell’s debut Art Basel also opened strongly, with sales of works by the American Abstract Expressionist painters Mary Abbott (USD 500,000), Judith Godwin (USD 375,000), and Pat Passlof (USD 75,000). ‘Our first Art Basel in Basel has opened on a high note,’ said Christine Berry, the gallery’s cofounder. ‘With the Kunstmuseum Basel exhibition of Helen Frankenthaler currently on view, attention has extended to 20th-century women artists undergoing critical reassessment.’