This year\u2019s Art Basel opened with a series of strong, seven-figure sales during the VIP preview yesterday, suggesting continued demand for top-tier works despite any lingering uncertainty in the broader art market. For Art Basel\u2019s director Vincenzo de Bellis, the opening-day figures reflected an increased trust in the market among both exhibitors and collectors. \u201cIf you look at the quality that the galleries brought, it\u2019s a super sign of confidence from their side, which makes me very confident about where the market is,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
The most valuable transaction reported on the fair\u2019s opening day, at the time of going to press, was Pablo Picasso\u2019s Le peintre et son mod\u00e8le dans un paysage (the painter and his model in a landscape, 1963), which was publicly offered at $35m by Hauser & Wirth. The fleshy painting is a self-portrait of Picasso and his second wife Jacqueline Roque, depicted as a Cubist nude.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasel is Basel. Clients come for art and to acquire something for their collection. It\u2019s really no comparison to any other fair in the world,\u201d says Marc Payot, the president of Hauser & Wirth. \u201cWe are in a very particular market right now; for important pieces, there is a lot of appetite, and for successful primary artists as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alongside Picasso, the gallery reported selling two works by Cy Twombly for $5m and $2.5m, a Louise Bourgeois work for $2.5m and a 1971
painting by Maria Lassnig for $1.75m. It also placed Nairy Baghramian\u2019s multimedia sculpture Side Leaps_Spatial Compositions with a Swiss collection for \u20ac600,000. Baghramian is the artist chosen by Art Basel for this year\u2019s Messeplatz commission.<\/p>\n
Contemporary successes<\/p>\n
Thaddaeus Ropac reported some of the day\u2019s strongest sales. Pierre Soulages\u2019s Peinture 146 x 97 cm, 31 janvier 1954 (1954) sold for more than $3m, while Helen Frankenthaler\u2019s Sudden Wave (1982) sold for around $3m. (The Kunstmuseum Basel is currently staging the largest ever European survey of Frankenthaler\u2019s work.) The gallery also sold Lucio Fontana\u2019s Concetto spaziale, Attese (1965) for \u20ac1.8m and Georg Baselitz\u2019s Ach, M\u00e4dchen gr\u00fcn (2010) for \u20ac1.2m.<\/p>\n