What Sold at Paris+ par Art Basel 2022

At the press conference on October 18th, the day before the opening of Paris+, Art Basel’s newest venture, Maximilíano Durón of ARTnews asked if journalists should be “forgiving” towards the fair as there had only been nine months of planning. Art Basel global director Marc Spiegler said to “feel free to.”

This interaction was indicative of the general feeling among the fair’s participants: Everyone was quietly hoping it would be a massive success, but didn’t want to comment on it just yet. One gallerist said it felt like some peers “phoned it in” for Frieze London, which was held the week before, and kept their best pieces for Paris+—which, considering the high concentration of blue-chip artists across the fair, was not wrong.

The Grand Palais Éphémère was certainly an illustrious location for the fair, positioned on the other end of the Champ de Mars to the Eiffel Tower. Yet the constant foot traffic—the fair welcomed 40,000 visitors—took its toll on the site, and it showed. Floorboards that started creaking on the first day had fully deformed by the last, and carpets had worn thin in the booths that had them. However, galleries were more than happy with how the fair went.

Hauser & Wirth president Marc Payot said, “It was clear on this first day of the fair that collectors and curators have gotten the assignment,” noting how many major works sold within hours of the doors’ opening. If anything, Paris+’s success has given the question of whether FIAC will return (seeing as Paris+ took both FIAC’s venue and traditional time slot this year) far more credence. “Everything is more,” said A Gentil Carioca director Gabriela Moraes. “More people from abroad, more sales, more art. [FIAC in 2019] was a very weak fair,” she said, in comparison.

Director of up-and-coming gallery Sans Titre, Marie Madec, echoed these comments, saying Paris+ “was the best fair we’ve ever done. As an emerging gallery, fairs are sometimes more of an image thing and, here, we actually feel like we’re getting the big world now that collectors are showing up from all over the world.” Both A Gentil Carioca and Sans Titre almost sold out their booths.

So many seven-figure sales were made that there is basically no space for anything less in the top sales roundup. Read on for the eye-watering numbers.

Five major sales

• Pace Gallery sold Robert Motherwell’s painting Je t’aime No II (1955), which had an asking price of $6.5 million, on the second day.
• David Zwirner sold a painting by Joan Mitchell, Border (1989), for $4.5 million to a private collection on the first day. (The major exhibition “Monet–Mitchell” is now showing at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris.)
• Hauser & Wirth sold a George Condo painting for $2.65 million on the first day.
• kamel mennour sold two Alberto Giacometti bronze sculptures: Composition (1927–28) for €2.75 million (about $2.7 million), and Figurine (1953–54) for €1.45 million (around $1.43 million), both on the first day.
• Thaddaeus Ropac sold Georg Baselitz’s painting Ohne Titel (Landschaft) (1970) for $1.7 million on the third day.

Many major artists saw sales across multiple booths, such as George Condo, whose painting Eyes Wide Open (2022) sold for $1.55 million on the first day by Sprüth Magers. And Alex Katz, whose retrospective at the Guggenheim opened last week, had works sold by Gladstone Gallery (Split 9, 2022, for $1.5 million) and Thaddaeus Ropac (Iris 5, 2019, and Yellow Buttercups 1, 2021, each for $700,000).

The sentiment that galleries had brought pieces they could flex with was evident with David Zwirner, which, in addition to the Mitchell painting, also sold Robert Ryman’s Untitled (1963) for $3 million; Luc Tuymans’s Bouhouche (2007) for $1.35 million; and Josef Albers’s Study to Homage to the Square: Aurora (1957) for $1 million.

Other major seven-figure sales include:

• Acquavella Galleries sold Sean Scully’s painting North Eagle (1983–84), made on two attached canvases, which had an asking price of $1.5 million.
• Applicat-Prazan sold Georges Matheiu’s Petite suite d’étranglements (1959–61), an oil painting, for €1 million–€1.6 million (about $980,000–$1.57 million) to a private collector.
• Hauser & Wirth also sold two other works in the seven figures: Ed Clark’s acrylic painting Paris Rose (1966) for $1 million–$1.5 million and Rashid Johnson’s oil painting Bruise Painting “Sanctuary” (2022) for $1 million.
• Luhring Augustine sold a Christopher Wool work, Untitled (1997), for $1.5 million.

• Xavier Hufkens sold a Roni Horn cast glass sculpture for approximately $1.3 million; and a painting by Alice Neel (whose retrospective is currently at the Centre Pompidou) for $1.2 million.
• Almine Rech sold Scott Kahn’s oil painting The Curtains Parted (2022) for $1.2 million–$1.5 million.
• Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois sold three large paintings by Peter Stämpfli for €1 million–€1.3 million (about $980,000–$1.28 million).
• Tim Van Laere Gallery sold Adrian Ghenie’s Studio Scene 6 (2022) for €1.2 million (about $1.18 million) to a private collection in the U.S.

From the Galeries Émergentes sector

• Nicoletti Contemporary, an East London gallery established in 2018, featured the work of French artist Josèfa Ntjam: photomontages sold for €8,000–€12,000 ($7,860–$11,800) each to private French collectors; and a ceramic sculpture sold to a French institution for €10,000 ($9,820).
• Los Angeles’s Chris Sharp Gallery sold Sophie Barber’s works from £4,000–£25,000 (about $4,500–$28,000) to private collectors from London, Toulouse, New York, Los Angeles, and Belgium.
• Florentine gallery Veda sold Monique Mouton’s paintings from €9,000–€25,000 (about $8,800–$24,500) to collectors from Italy, Belgium, and the U.S.

Institutional placements

• David Zwirner sold Anni Albers’s Study for DO II (1973) for $450,000 to an Asian museum on the first day.
• Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder sold Katharina Grosse’s acrylic painting Ohne Titel (2020) for €350,000 (about $345,900) to a private Eastern European museum.
• Loevenbruck sold Gilles Aillaud’s Deux serpents (1964) for €100,000 ($98,000) to a Chinese museum.
• Zeno X Gallery sold several works to institutions: Michaël Borremans’s Mercy (2017) for $250,000 to a Chinese museum; Marina Rheingantz’s oil painting Fubá (2022) for $80,000 to a European museum; and Mounira Al Solh’s Belated Revolutions (2022) for €24,000 ($23,700) to a U.S. museum.

• Magnin-A sold Hilary Balu’s In the Floods of Illusions (Luyalu ya Nzinga) (2022) for €55,000 ($54,000) to a museum.
• Semiose sold a Moffat Takadiwa found-object sculpture Ruvarashe/Flower of God (a) (2022) for €35,000 ($34,000) to Fondation H in Madagascar.
• Mai 36 Galerie sold a patinated bronze wax casting by Jürgen Drescher, Alpaka I (bronze) (2022), for €18,000 ($17,790) to a private U.S. museum.

Sold-out booths

• Xippas showed only one work: Bertille Bak’s video installation Mineur Mineur (2022). All seven editions of the work went to institutions, with three already committed, and the other four currently going through the acquisition process. Each edition went for €50,000 ($49,000). One of the gallery’s staff noted how nice it was to see their hopes come into fruition: People not only stopped to watch, but also sat down at the provided benches and put on the headphones to listen to the audio, too.
• Mariane Ibrahim Gallery sold out in the middle of the first day, including Peter Uka’s Skate (2022) for $90,000; Raphael Barontini’s À la cour D'Henri Christophe (2022) for €60,000 ($59,000); and Carmen Neely’s Honor You (2022) for €35,000 ($34,000).

Other notable sales

• Galerie Nathalie Obadia sold Fiona Rae’s Untitled (T1000) (1996) for €150,000–€200,000 ($147,000–$196,000), and Wang Keping’s wooden sculpture Amour maternel (2019) for €100,000–€200,000 ($98,000–$196,000).
• Templon, the only gallery at the fair to show works by Kehinde Wiley (who also has three giant works on show at the Musée d’Orsay currently), sold one of his paintings for $880,000 and three sculptures from $270,000–$300,000. Templon also sold its paintings by Michael Ray Charles—who is solely represented by the gallery after reemerging from a decade’s hiatus—for $150,000–$200,000.
• LGDR sold Günther Uecker’s Shield (2022) for $850,000.
• Galleria Continua sold an Antony Gormley sculpture, STAND XI (2021), for £500,000 ($564,000), and Berlinde De Bruyckere’s sculpture Arcangelo V (2021) for €300,000 ($295,000).