A $20 million Philip Guston painting leads the reported sales from Art Basel in Miami Beach’s VIP day.

A $20 million Philip Guston painting led the slate of reported sales from the VIP day of Art Basel in Miami Beach, which opened yesterday. The painting, Painter at Night (1979) was sold by Hauser & Wirth, which also announced sales of a $2.4 million George Condo painting and a $1 million Henry Taylor painting.

“For us, this opening of Art Basel Miami Beach has been a resounding affirmation of the American art market’s strength and resilience,” said Marc Payot, president of Hauser & Wirth.

Other seven-figure sales announced by galleries at the fair included:

• Xavier Hufkens sold a painting by Tracey Emin for £1.2 million ($1.5 million).
• Kasmin sold a painting by Alex Katz for $1.4 million.
• Almine Rech sold a painting by Tom Wesselmann in the range of $1.25 million to $1.35 million.
• Thaddaeus Ropac sold a painting by Robert Rauschenberg for $1.7 million, and two paintings by Georg Baselitz for €1.5 million ($1.6 million) and €1.2 million ($1.3 million).
• David Zwirner sold three Robert Ryman paintings made 1961–1964 for $2 million–$3 million apiece, an Alice Neel painting for $2 million, a painting by Noah Davis for $1.6 million, and a painting by Elizabeth Peyton for $1.3 million.

Other notable sales from the opening day of the fair included a work by Alicia Adamerovich, which was sold by Michael Kohn Gallery to the ICA Miami, and Miami-based Spinello Projects’s entire booth from of works by Esaí Alfredo, which were sold within the first one and a half hours of the fair. Prices for those works ranged from $11,000 to $35,000.