Art Basel 2025 attracts over 88,000 visitors

Art Basel attracted 88,000 visitors, slightly down from 2024 (91,000). Keystone-SDA

Over 88,000 people attended this year's edition of Art Basel that ended on Sunday. The organisers have reported outstanding sales, confirming the fair's leading role in the global art market.

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Art Basel’s director, Maike Cruse, said this year’s edition demonstrated the continued strength, resilience and international reach of the global art market. In all, 289 galleries from 42 countries were present at the event, which ended on June 22.

An official press statement said participating galleries reported strong sales across all market segments and fair sectors.

The Annely Juda Fine Arts gallery sold a painting by British artist David Hockney for $13-17 million (CHF10.6 million-14 million), without disclosing its exact price. David Zwirner Gallery also sold a sculpture by Ruth Asawa for $9.5 million and a painting by German artist Gerhard Richter for $6.8 million.

However, prices did not reach the heights of 2022, when the market was in full swing. A sculpture by the Franco-American artist Louise Bourgeois fetched $40 million.

Gold rather than art

“The market is more moderate,” Noah Horowitz, Art Basel’s managing director, told the AFP news agency. Nonetheless, major sales continue to take place there “despite the great complexity of what is happening in the world”, he said.

According to a report produced for the fair by Arts Economics and the UBS bank, the art market slowed in 2023, then shrank by 12% globally in 2024 to $57.5 billion. There has been a notable decline in sales of art worth over $10 million.

“In the next six to twelve months, I don’t see any change on the horizon,” said Hans Laenen, an art market specialist at insurer AXA XL.

With economic and geopolitical uncertainties ratcheted up a notch due to the tensions between Israel and Iran, “investors are turning very strongly towards gold”, he explained.

In the art sector, attitudes are “more conservative”, on the part of both buyers and sellers, who prefer to wait before putting works on the market in this uncertain climate, he said.

Laenen told AFP that “collections remain stable, and are even growing” in terms of insured amounts. “The number of transactions is increasing”, but in “lower price segments”, he noted.

According to the insurance company Hiscox, the number of lots sold for less than $50,000 rose by 20% in auction rooms in 2024 despite the sharp fall in high-priced works, indicating a change in collector behaviour.

A new generation

According to Jean Gazançon, director of Arte Generali, “there is a new generation of collectors” arriving on the market.

“More and more people in their thirties are being insured for collections of €300,000, €500,000 or €1 million,” he says. “These are successful start-ups, investment bankers, lawyers or sometimes people who have inherited”, and are starting their collections “very young”, sometimes with “very radical” choices, he observes.

UBS expects the trend to continue. According to its projections, an unprecedented transfer of wealth will take place over the next 20-25 years as the population ages.

At global level, billions of dollars worth of assets will change hands worldwide, according to the bank, which will give rise to “a new generation of collectors”, with different tastes and “buying behaviour”, predicts Eric Landolt, co-head of UBS’s art advisory activities.

Translated from German with DeepL/sb

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