The Art Basel fair, which runs until Sunday, has kicked off with sales of works valued at millions of dollars.
The organization said that market resilience at the top end was evident, with major works by Pablo Picasso, Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Josef Albers, David Hockney and Louise Bourgeois finding buyers in the opening hours of the fair, which opened to the public on Thursday.
Organizers said on Wednesday that Picasso's 1963 "Le peintre et son modèle dans un paysage" (1963), which had an asking price of $35 million, was sold by Hauser & Wirth, which also reported the sale of two works by Cy Twombly.
"The first day of Art Basel 2026 has been stellar for Hauser & Wirth," gallery head Iwan Wirth said after the sales.
Other sellers included Thaddaeus Ropac and David Zwirner.
The fair has persuaded more than 190 galleries to keep their top works for sale undisclosed up to the VIP opening, rather than providing pre-sales viewing.
This meant that works by renowned artists like Gerhard Richter, Andy Warhol, Pierre Huyghe and Henry Moore were seen for the first time only on Tuesday.
Among the works sold was a 1984 de Kooning oil for a high seven-figure sum to a private collection in Asia within the first hour, as well as two Hockney works: "Studio Interior #2" (2014) for $8.5 million and an iPad drawing from "The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate" series for $650,000.
US buyers were largely absent this year. "The Americans are looking more to Paris where there has been an Art Basel Paris since 2022," Ropac told dpa. There were also few Asian buyers.
Ropac said the quality on offer remained high and that the fair's new initiative was being positively received.
