ART BASEL PARIS 2025

This week Art Basel held its annual Paris edition of the fair in the impressive Grand Palais of the French capital. Over 200 galleries, including 29 first-time participants showcased their best art and invited collectors to explore their booths and installations comprising 20th and 21st century art. Significantly smaller than the fair’s bigger sister in Basel Switzerland, the Paris edition almost had an intimate feel to it even if aisles quickly became crowded when the fair opened its doors to the public on Thursday after its Avant Première on Tuesday and First Choice entries on Wednesday.

The fair coincided with Gerhard Richter’s monumental retrospective at the Louis Vuitton Foundation and –as could be expected– Richter was everywhere: Hauser and Wirth sold a 1987 Abstraktes Bild for 23 million USD, Lévy Gorvy Dayan had one from 1988 priced at 25.5 million USD and little works by the German artist could be found in many other booths.

Generally, secondary market galleries confirmed important sales. Also, the primary market’s emerging art, mainly represented in the peripheries of the main hall and on the upper ranks of the Grand Palais, reported a number of sales pointing to an overall healthier and more stable market as also indicated by the London auctions the week before.While Pace sold one of the oldest works of the fair, a newly attributed Amedeo Modigliani from 1918 for close to ten million USD, it was Gagosian that stunned visitors with a voluptuous 17th century masterpiece by Sir Peter Paul Rubens. The old master was skillfully paired with a Picasso nude and a Jenny Saville oil highlighting the art historical legacy that is a vital pillar for the art market but often secondary during the commercial nature of fairs.

After many American collectors had skipped Art Basel in Switzerland in June, gallerists were happy to welcome them back to their booths in Paris. Interestingly, many collectors chose Paris also over London this year: the fair in Paris, which is always a week after Frieze in London, saw gallerists and visitors flocking to the French capital who did not go to the British fair before. While the shift towards France as a contestant for the most important European art hub is yet to happen, the art world is openly eyeing with Paris as a key destination, which will likely grow in the following years.