Picasso painting sold for $35 million at Art Basel

Many art pieces sold for millions in the first few hours of the Art Basel. Keystone-SDA

Many works by Picasso, David Hockney, Louise Bourgeois and other blue-chip artists sold for millions in the first few hours of Art Basel.

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At this year’s Art Basel, major galleries, which usually specialise in contemporary art, are placing a strong emphasis on the blue-chip works of classical modernism. A major Picasso piece was on display at Hauser & Wirth and several others from the great Spanish master could be found not far away at Gagosian gallery.

They are likely to have been buoyed by the positive outlook in the high-end sector of the art market, as highlighted in the Art Market Report by Art Basel and Swiss bank UBS. The sales report from the first few hours confirm this. Hauser & Wirth sold Picasso’s late work Le peintre et son modèle dans un paysage for $35 million (CHF27 million).

Hauser & Wirth also achieved several other sales in the millions: these included, amongst others, a work by Cy Twombly for $5 million and a painting by Louise Bourgeois for $2.5 million. “It was ‘the strongest first day ever’,” gallery founder Iwan Wirth is quoted as saying in the sales report.

According to the report, the Akmine Reich Gallery also sold a Picasso for over $6 million. Alongside the Picassos and other masters of classical modernism, works by the recently deceased star artist David Hockney also fetched high prices. The Gray Gallery sold Hockney’s Studio Interior #2 from 2014 for $8.5 million.

The current retrospective at the Kunstmuseum Basel appears to have sparked a surge of interest in the US artist Helen Frankenthaler, who died in 2011. The Thaddaeus Roppac Gallery sold one of her paintings “in the region” of $3 million, as it is reported. Xares Art reported a sale price of $2 million for a Frankenthaler painting.

Art Unlimited with a strong focus on contemporary art

From a visitor’s perspective, a tour of Art Unlimited – the section dedicated to large-format to enormous works – is well worth a visit this year. It was curated for the first time by Ruba Katrib, Director of Curatorial Affairs at MoMA PS1 in New York.

Works were also sold there for millions: for example, Niki de Saint Phalle’s Blue Obelisk for €1 million and a work by Isa Genzken for €1.2 million – both to European museums.

The Art Basel art fair opens its doors to the general public on Thursday and runs until Sunday.

Translated from German by AI/jdp

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