The Swiss voice in the world since 1935

Louise Bourgeois remains among bestsellers at Art Basel

Smoking ballerina
The artwork "Smoking ballerina" (2023) by US artist Karon Davis is on display at the international art show Art Basel on Tuesday Keystone / Georgios Kefalas

Galleries have already reported numerous sales in the millions on the first day of Art Basel. The artist Louise Bourgeois remained the bestseller. The declared top seller was a sunflower painting by Joan Mitchell, which sold for $20 million (CHF18 million).

Check out our selection of newsletters. Subscribe here.

According to the Art Basel Sales Report, the painting was sold by the David Zwirner Gallery. The New York gallery also sold another painting by Mitchell (1925-1992) for $1.3 million.

Among other million-dollar sales, the German artist Gerhard Richter, whose Abstract Painting from 2016 sold for $6 million, was also highly prized at Zwirner. Three paintings by his German colleague Georg Baselitz went for between $1.2 million and $2 million at Thaddeus Ropac from Salzburg.

The Zurich gallery Hauser & Wirth also declared itself extremely successful on the first Art Day, reporting half a dozen million-dollar sales. These included a small marble sculpture by Louise Bourgeois (Woman with Packages), which sold for $3.5 million.

+ Art Basel opens amid volatile economic situation

This was quite a bit less than the spider sculptures of previous years, for which prices in the double-digit million range had been paid. However, $16 million was paid at the gallery for an untitled work on paper by Arshile Gorky (1904-1984).

A sculpture by Bourgeois also went over the gallery counter at Xavier Hukens from Brussels for $1.2 million.

The sales at Pace (New York etc.) were particularly special. There, an extensive art sofa landscape by Jean Dubuffet invited visitors to sit down. Three editions of his Banc-Salon from 1970 to 2024 were sold for €800,000 (CHF770,000) each.

Translated from German by DeepL/ts

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.

External Content
Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.
Almost finished… We need to confirm your email address. To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you.
Daily news

Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox.

Daily

The SBC Privacy Policy provides additional information on how your data is processed.

Popular Stories

Most Discussed

News

F/A-18 take-offs and landings at Bern-Belp Airport

More

F/A-18s take off and land at Bern Airport

This content was published on The Swiss Armed Forces are training their fighter jets in Bern to fly from a civilian base. The exercise at Bern Airport will last until Wednesday.

Read more: F/A-18s take off and land at Bern Airport
cern

More

Plans materialise for new particle accelerator in Geneva

This content was published on Preparations for a huge new particle accelerator in Geneva have reached a milestone. After several years of work, a feasibility study for the project has now been finalised.

Read more: Plans materialise for new particle accelerator in Geneva
More Russian assets frozen in Switzerland

More

More Russian assets frozen in Switzerland

This content was published on The value of frozen Russian assets in Switzerland currently stands at CHF7.4 billion ($8.4 billion), the Swiss government announced on Tuesday.

Read more: More Russian assets frozen in Switzerland
Increase in business start-ups in the 1st quarter

More

Increase in Swiss business start-ups in Q1

This content was published on The number of business start-ups in Switzerland accelerated in the first three months of the year, with entrepreneurs being particularly dynamic in Central Switzerland, Basel and Geneva.

Read more: Increase in Swiss business start-ups in Q1

In compliance with the JTI standards

More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative

You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!

If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR