Art Basel Miami Beach opened yesterday with a VIP preview that drew an engaged group of collectors. Early activity spanned price points, from seven-figure blue-chip acquisitions to steady mid-range sales, and institutional purchases. The debut of Zero 10 – a new platform for digital practices – sparked a flurry of sales, with one presentation selling out by day’s end.

As aisles filled, galleries were already logging their first headline transactions. David Zwirner opened the preview with the standout sale of a 2016 abstract painting by Gerhard Richter for USD 5.5 million, and the momentum carried through the evening. The gallery also sold a 1967 portrait by Alice Neel for USD 3.3 million, while two vivid paintings from Josef Albers’s ‘Homage to the Square’ series achieved USD 2.2 million and USD 2.5 million. A 1969 wire sculpture by Ruth Asawa and a new painting of a frenzied kitchen scene by Dana Schutz both sold for USD 1.2 million.

At Hauser & Wirth’s booth, mid-century works by Louise Bourgeois proved magnetic. Her shadowy oil painting Mr. Follett: Nursery-Man (1944) sold for USD 2.5 million, while the slender metal sculpture Persistent Antagonism (1946–1948) was acquired for USD 3.2 million. The gallery also reported million-dollar results for works by Ed Clark, Henry Taylor, and Rashid Johnson, but its headline sale was George Condo’s Untitled (Taxi Painting) (2011), which found a buyer for USD 4 million.

Condo was a force across the fair. At Sprüth Magers, his 2024 work on paper Open Forms sold for USD 1.2 million, while Gladstone Gallery sold four of his drawings in the USD 95,000–200,000 range. Gladstone also recorded multiple sales of Ugo Rondinone’s brightly painted stone sculptures – descendants of the artist’s Seven Magic Mountains totems in the Nevada desert – alongside a notable historical highlight: Robert Rauschenberg’s Tarnished Honor (Copperhead) (1989), which sold for USD 1.5 million.

Elsewhere in the Galleries sector, Almine Rech sold a Pablo Picasso painting for USD 2.8–3 million, while an ethereal new work from James Turrell’s ‘Glassworks’ series found a buyer for around USD 1 million. At Thaddaeus Ropac, two paintings by Alex Katz – Orange Hat 2 (1973) and Wildflowers 1 (2010) – went for USD 2.5 million and USD 1.5 million respectively, while a Georg Baselitz self-portrait from 1997 fetched just over USD 1.1 million.

Works by and about British icons shaped White Cube’s early sales. Tracey Emin’s sensual acrylic painting To Much Force (2025) sold for USD 1.6 million, and Damien Hirst’s 2005 pill cabinet When the Heart Speaks sold for USD 2.5 million. The star power extended to Andreas Gursky’s Harry Styles (2025) – offering a stage view of the pop musician before a stadium crowd – which sold for USD 1.4 million. Adding a sculptural counterpoint, Richard Hunt’s bronze Half Circle Runner (1979) followed at USD 1 million.

Metalwork also shone at Pace’s booth. Lynda Benglis’s brass sculpture Fanfaronade (1979) sold for USD 400,000, while Sam Gilliam’s homage painting Heroines, Beyoncé, Serena and Althea (2020) achieved USD 1.1 million. Further Pace sales included Elmgreen & Dragset’s figurative sculpture Sunshine (2025) for USD 320,000, two stainless steel clock works from Alicja Kwade’s ‘In-Between’ series for USD 110,000 and USD 130,000, and Emily Kam Kngwarray’s Yam Dreaming (1995) for USD 350,000.

Painting proved especially popular across sectors, driving significant mid-range sales. In Tina Kim Gallery’s booth, paintings by Ha Chong-Hyun, Park Seo-Bo, and Kim Tschang-Yeul sold for between USD 100,000 and 390,000 each. At Uffner & Liu, paintings by Talia Levitt, Anna Jung Seo, Piper Bangs, Sarah Martin-Nuss, and Anne Buckwalter each sold for between USD 12,000 and USD 30,000.

Sculptures made with unconventional materials also drew attention. Karma sold Cady Noland’s Institutional Field Door (1991) – a chain-link gate from the artist’s early examinations of American systems of control – for USD 375,000. At Mai 36 Galerie, H.R. Giger’s aluminum sculpture Birth Machine Baby (1998) sold for USD 125,000, while Lisson Gallery sold a Pedro Reyes volcanic-stone sculpture for USD 180,000 and three other works by the artist for USD 50,000 each. At Document, Anneke Eussen’s wall work made from recycled glass went to a Florida collector for USD 28,000.

That engagement with domestic collectors extended across the show: Wentrup matched works by Gregor Hildebrandt, Sophie von Hellermann, Magnus Plessen, and Anastasia Samoylova with collectors in Michigan, Dallas, Miami, and New York. American institutions were active as well: in the Survey sector, Lagos-based kó sold Nike Davies-Okundaye’s The lost cat (1973), a bead-on-board work rooted in adire eleko textile traditions, to the Toledo Museum of Art for USD 100,000.

Zero 10, Art Basel Miami Beach’s first dedicated platform for digital art and innovation, quickly emerged as one of the fair’s most closely watched sectors, and early sales signaled strong appetite for digital works. For Beeple Studios, the VIP preview resulted in a clean sweep when all 10 works from the ‘Regular Animals’ series sold for USD 100,000 each. New York-based gallery Heft also saw early success, selling four of Michael Kozlowski’s circuit board–inspired reliefs for USD 25,000 apiece.

Art Blocks sold eight of Larva Labs’s Quine print-and-NFT pairings to private collections in the United States and Australia for USD 25,000–45,000 each, while SOLOS sold seven of Tyler Hobbs’s algorithm-generated abstractions for USD 42,000 apiece. Nguyen Wahed sold Kim Asendorf’s web-based animation for USD 145,000 and five editions of Joe Pease’s video work zero dollar man, each for USD 35,000.

Zero 10’s pricing showed the range of the digital market, balancing six-figure highlights with accessible entry points. Fellowship x ARTXCODE’s presentation in the sector made that clear: IX Shells’s interactive video installation No Me Olvides sold for USD 140,000, while 25 MP4 editions of the same work went for USD 3,500 each.

But fittingly, not all purchases were recorded in dollars: at AOTM, Dmitri Cherniak sold nine works from his ‘Polygon Etcetera’ series, each for ETH 5. Meanwhile, XCOPY’s ‘Coin Laundry’ cycle was in full spin, with over 46,000 free NFTs claimed at Nguyen Wahed’s booth during the preview.

As the week unfolds, exhibitors report robust inquiries and active follow-up conversations – early signs that the momentum of the preview is poised to carry through the fair.

Credits and Captions

Art Basel Miami Beach runs December 5 – 7, 2025. Discover all galleries participating in Art Basel Miami Beach's 2025 here.

Elliat Albrecht is a writer and editor based in Canada.

Caption for header image: Nike Davies-Okundaye’s works presented by kó in the Survey sector of Art Basel Miami Beach 2025. The lost cat (1973) was sold to the Toledo Museum of Art for USD 100,000.

Published on December 4, 2025.