Why Keith Haring’s Little-Known Sculptures Are Worth a Closer Look https://ift.tt/QI9fHE8

Even in the 1980s, Keith Haring’s distinctively spry drawing style seemed to be ubiquitous. His striking, flat line compositions featured an endless flow of dogs barking, or television and computer screens broadcasting his “radiant baby” figures. Elsewhere, he portrayed UFOs radiating powerful beams of energy, beating hearts, and mythical creatures. These graphics covered every surface imaginable in downtown New York—the city was his home and studio. Working prolifically until his death from AIDS-related illnesses at the age of 31, Haring left behind a huge number of artworks, some of which are only now getting the attention they deserve.

Though he is perhaps best known for the arresting drawing patterns that are familiar cultural touchpoints, he also produced sculptures, though they have received less attention until now. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art’s new exhibition, “Keith Haring in 3D,” features an expansive chronological and thematic survey of the objects and three-dimensional artworks that the artist claimed with his singular graphic approach. The exhibition, on view through January 25, 2027, is designed to bring out deeper dimensions in the work as well. Standalone cube-shaped rooms hold bodies of work together thematically, and nothing is installed on the walls of the galleries directly. Though the expression lines surrounding his two-dimensional characters give them a lighthearted edge, his subject matter was deeply, radically political. As curator and artist Robert Storr writes in the exhibition catalog, “He made it all look so easy, which is anathema for those who view struggle as the litmus test of consequential talent …” Here are five things to know about this lesser-known side of Haring’s practice.

Every found object was a blank canvas

Haring saw the potential for nearly any object to become a canvas: He turned trash cans, plant-store vases, crutches, cribs, high chairs, and thrifted treasures into works of his own. Along with his friends, fellow artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kenny Scharf, Fab 5 Freddy, and others, Haring decorated the “fun fridge” in the East Village’s FUN Gallery, a hub for downtown crowds. He also brought his talents to a readymade trophy awarded for “best voguing” at the DIFFA (Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS) Love Ball. Another sculpture was made as a sentimental valentine for his gallerist, Patti—a deluxe red heart filled with chocolate bonbons from Godiva, which he then covered in rows of his heart-faced figures and rows of x’s.

Cars held a particular allure for Haring: One of the first objects that he ever covered in his sketches was a side panel of a taxi in 1981, with his frequent collaborator, Angel Ortiz (also known as LA II). By 1986, he graduated to drawing on a 1963 Buick Special, which is completely covered in his orange and blue lines. Haring painted the Buick (signed with a large orange K) for architect Peter Pennoyer in return for the design of the artist’s legendary Pop Shop in SoHo.

Keith Haring was inspired by antiquity

Though deeply informed by the art of Africa, Central and South America, and the Pacific Islands, Haring continued to make what artist Roy Lichtenstein referred to as “pseudo-Greek things.” For example, the exhibition begins with a large cluster of terracotta and fiberglass vases in the Greek black-figure pottery tradition. In Untitled (Vase for Monique) (1989), for example, a line of figures is just outrunning a snake’s tongue, while a ring of figures dances below it, holding hands.

Yet it was ancient Egypt that had some of the greatest influence on his sculptures. Around the same time that he moved to New York City from rural Pennsylvania, the Metropolitan Museum of Art staged “The Treasures of Tutankhamun,” a record-breaking exhibition that reverberated in popular culture at the time. While a student at the School of Visual Arts, Haring filled his notebooks with sketches of Nefertiti and King Tut.

Eventually, Haring had the chance to recreate his sarcophagus in shimmering gold fiberglass and adorned it with LA II’s graffiti tags. He also produced several pyramids in his primary-color-blocked pattern. And although the figures that feature throughout his drawings are often seen as inspired by breakdancers, they also reference the figures that lined ancient Egyptian friezes. In the blue-and-yellow pyramid on view here, Haring’s “radiant pets” are tightly packed into a choreographed jumble among figures lassoed around their waists and necks. Their arms are exaggeratedly outstretched far off their torsos, and morphing into the animal figures around them, referencing the Egyptian animal pantheon.

Haring created living sculptures in performances

Keith Haring and Grace Jones, “Vamp”, Burbank, 1986
Douglas Kirkland
Fahey/Klein Gallery

Bill T. Jones Body Painting with Keith Haring, 1983
Tseng Kwong Chi
Yancey Richardson Gallery

Haring experimented in both video and performance with other artists. For Video Clones (1979), he filmed dancer and choreographer Molissa Fenley in movement, capturing the alternating circle and square outlines in which she moved her feet.

His work with choreographer and dancer Bill T. Jones is still instantly recognizable today: For his 1982 performance Long Distance, Haring painted the walls behind Bill T. Jones onstage at The Kitchen. For later projects, Haring painted on Jones’s skin, drawing his signature sketches on him in white acrylic as Jones posed for the camera. In these performances, Haring would eventually turn the paintbrush onto his own body, as captured by Annie Leibovitz. Haring painted Grace Jones (who Andy Warhol introduced him to) in the same manner, adding elaborate, graphic black-and-white towering headdresses. Jones’s portraits as a living “Haring figure” were captured by Robert Mapplethorpe in 1984.

He made outsized fashion for outsized personalities

Art Edition No. 1–1,000 ‘Keith Haring’, 2023
Annie Leibovitz
Weng Contemporary

Downtown street culture, the art world, and nightlife all converged at one place for Haring: the club, particularly Palladium, which opened in 1985. Artists were celebrities there, and Haring was given the honor of painting the enormous mural behind the DJ booth at the venue’s grand dance floor. His chromatic, euphorically dancing figures appeared to bring their rhythm to the dance floor in front of them, as if in three dimensions.

For his “Party of Life” birthday party in 1984 at Paradise Garage, guests wore his collaborative designs with Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood. Haring painted Grace Jones head-to-toe and she climbed a stage flanked by two of Haring’s decorated columns for a completely immersive performance.

Later, in 1986, Haring produced a 60-foot-long skirt for the music video for Grace Jones’s song “I’m Not Perfect (But I’m Perfect For You).” The entire skirt painting was revealed at the end of the song.

Pop Shop was art for everyone

Though Haring’s shaking figures became icons of the New York subway system, he eventually stopped tagging them, as collectors began to take them for themselves from the station walls. Instead, he opened Pop Shop, his own store at 292 Lafayette Street, in 1986. Pop Shop made his Pop art easily accessible to the public, selling novelty pins, clothing, pillows, radios, watches, stickers, and charms, allowing just about anyone to participate in the circulation of his art. Pop Shop inverted the art-viewing experience, turning the exhibition and the gift shop into one experience where everything was for sale and nothing was off-limits.

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Iconic video artwork of World Cup-winning soccer player Zinedine Zidane heads to Los Angeles. https://ift.tt/nf3pU0B

An exhibition of works by Scottish artist Douglas Gordon, centered around his landmark double-screen film Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (2006), will open at Gagosian Beverly Hills next month. Titled “Magic is sometimes very close to nothing at all,” the exhibition coincides with the FIFA World Cup 2026, which is being hosted across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, with several matches taking place in Los Angeles.

Made in collaboration with French artist Philippe Parreno, Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait follows the legendary French footballer Zinédine Zidane in real time over the course of a single match between his Spanish club Real Madrid and Villarreal at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium in Madrid on April 23, 2005. Shot on 17 cameras and edited together with television commentary and the noise of 72,000 spectators, the film is soundtracked by Scottish post-rock band Mogwai. Capturing Zidane from multiple angles— including moments when play unfolds elsewhere on the pitch— it constructs an intimate portrait of one of the sport’s most celebrated figures.

The work exists in 17 versions, many held in major institutional collections including the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. This summer, it is also on view in New York at the Guggenheim Museum, in Miami at both the Bass Museum and Pérez Art Museum, and in Minneapolis at the Walker Art Center, as institutions across the U.S. celebrate the soccer tournament.

The Gagosian presentation also includes a selection of Gordon’s other works, among them the early vinyl piece Meaning and Location (1990) and the neon work Tears are not Enough (2023). For this exhibition, a number of the text works have been rendered in languages spoken across Los Angeles, including Armenian, Farsi, Korean, and the Indigenous American Chumash language.

The opening also marks 25 years since Gordon’s 2001 survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Explore Artsy’s World Cup content here.

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National Portrait Gallery awards 2026 prize to American artist Marc Dalessio. https://ift.tt/z3BKOQh

The National Portrait Gallery has awarded the first prize in the Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award 2026 to Marc Dalessio. The Los Angeles–born artist, who is currently based in southwest France, was awarded the prize for his work Jean-Denis (2025), a portrait of his neighbor painted in natural light over six sittings at his studio.

The award, one of the most prestigious portrait painting competitions in the world, attracted 1,474 submissions from artists across 63 countries. Some 51 shortlisted works will go on public display at the National Portrait Gallery in London from June 25th to October 7th, before the exhibition travels elsewhere in England to Derby Museum and Art Gallery and The Gallery at The Arc in Winchester,. Dalessio will receive a prize of £35,000 ($46,000).

Trained in Florence and previously recognized for his plein air landscapes, Dalessio returned to portraiture after relocating to France and restoring a former artist’s studio. Jean-Denis originated when his neighbor arrived unannounced one morning, requesting to be painted. The judges praised the work’s restrained handling and emotional immediacy, noting its empathetic depiction of the sitter and the subtle compositional authority of its execution.

Second prize of £12,000 ($15,786) was awarded to Manchester-based artist Chloe Cox for What's Mine is Yours, a double portrait of foster carers Marva and Lionel Warmington. Third prize of £10,000 ($13,155) went to London-based Michael Slusakowicz for Charlie and Magda (2026), a double portrait with a bold use of color. The Young Artist Award of £9,000 ($11,840) was presented to Joel Nichols, a recent graduate of Oxford’s Ruskin School of Art, for In Our Borderlands (2025).

Victoria Siddall, director of the National Portrait Gallery and chair of the judging panel, noted the quality and diversity of this year’s submissions.

The Portrait Award has received more than 50,000 entries and attracted over six million exhibition visitors since its inception in 1980. Among its notable past winners are Alison Watt, the Scottish painter who took the prize in 1987; Stuart Pearson Wright, whose win in 2001 marked the beginning of a distinguished career in portraiture; and Paul Emsley, the 2007 winner who went on to paint the official portrait of Catherine, Princess of Wales. The winner of the 2025 National Portrait Gallery award was Moira Cameron.

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At 76, Sara Flores Is Painting the Geometry of Indigenous Resistance https://ift.tt/pA7ZLGh

As a child, artist Sara Flores learned Kené—a sacred geometric design system of the Shipibo-Konibo of the Amazon—at her mother’s side. Her mother learned in much the same way. The art form, passed through matrilineal lines linking back to an ancient ancestral past, expresses an accumulated knowledge of medicine, cosmology, ethics, and community care.

These compositions, entrancing in their detailed repetition, are now earning Kené a new international audience. Flores is currently representing Peru at the 2026 Venice Biennale, making her the first Indigenous artist to do so. This week, she will open “Akinananti,” her new solo exhibition at White Cube in New York, which will run from June 26th to August 14th.

Untitled (Panshin Pei Maya Kené, 2026), 2026
Sara Flores
White Cube

“The practice is not passed down through teaching in a formal sense, but through presence, through living it together,” said Flores, during a recent interview. Flores creates her works alongside her daughters and granddaughters, continuing the collective knowledge of Shipibo-Konibo women.

“The lines we paint connect us within a matriarchy that begins in ancestral time and will never stop. My work does not begin with me, and it will not end with me,” she explained.

Born in Peru in 1950, where she still lives, Flores is one of the foremost artists working in Kené today. She belongs to the Shipibo-Konibo nation—also known as Shipibo-Conibo—an Indigenous people residing along the Ucayali River. In keeping with the Kené tradition, she paints precise, interlocking geometric designs on cotton using dyes made from bark, river clay, turmeric, achiote, and other materials gathered from her surrounding environment.

Akinananti, in the Shipibo language, describes communal work done in a spirit of love and joy. Flores, who was born in the small village of Tambo Mayo and grew up in the community of Pahoyan along the Ucayali River, comes from a history of shared labor and resources centered on the river.

“We are river people,” she said. “The water, the forest, the plants, the animals—everything around us was alive and in relation to everything else. That is not a metaphor. That is simply how life was organized.”

This way of life was born of reciprocity. “We ate sitting together in a circle on the ground. We worked together. The community and the territory were not separate things,” she said.

Untitled (Punté Kené, 2026), 2026
Sara Flores
White Cube

“Akinananti” brings together both new and historical works by the artist. The centerpiece of the show, Untitled (A Window onto Endlessness) 2 (2025), is regarded by Flores as a sister work to a painting currently on view in her presentation “From Other Worlds” at Peru’s pavilion. This colossal painting is the largest work Flores has ever made, measuring over 8 feet tall and almost 15 and a half feet wide. Repeating patterns form a hypnotic, lattice-like network that hints at the interconnectedness of all life forms.

The new attention Flores has brought to Kené comes at a critical moment for the Shipibo-Konibo. Ecological devastation and encroaching industry, including illegal logging, have pushed the ecosystem into a calamitous state.

These realities are at the heart of Flores’s practice, and she understands her work as a form of Indigenous resistance. “Our home along the Ucayali River is under unprecedented pressure from logging, mining, and monocultures. Palm oil and coca, in particular,” she shared. “The forest we depend upon for our materials, our medicine, our knowledge, is being destroyed. I see myself with the responsibility of using the platforms given to me to speak up on behalf of my people.”

The patterns in Flores’s work come from those found in nature, such as the skin of the native carachama fish, the structure of leaves, or the movement of water. “These patterns are also inside ourselves, like the network of our minds,” she said. “Kené does not represent nature from the outside. It is an expression of the same logic that organizes it.”

“Akinananti” is organized in collaboration with the Shipibo-Conibo Center in New York, a nonprofit organization that works alongside Indigenous leadership in the Amazon toward Shipibo self-determination, territorial sovereignty, and a sustainable future.

Through this collaboration, proceeds from the sale of Flores’s work go directly to support Indigenous resistance in the Peruvian Amazon through programs supporting legal defense of the territory, as well as youth programs fostering ancestral knowledge of plants, art, and territorial resistance.

“The work of art and the work of environmental activism and the struggle for self-determination cannot be separated,” Flores said. “That is something I feel deeply.”

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Yaacov Agam, pioneer of kinetic art, dies at 98. https://ift.tt/Rq3xX7Y

Israeli artist Yaacov Agam, whose pioneering explorations of movement and perception helped define kinetic art in the postwar era, died on June 21st at age 98.

Born in Rishon LeZion, then part of British Mandate Palestine in 1928, Agam was raised in a religious household by his father, a rabbi and kabbalist. He studied at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem before continuing his education in Zürich under Bauhaus painter Johannes Itten. In 1951, Agam moved to Paris, where he developed the visual language that would make him a pioneering figure in kinetic and optical art. His work has been shown in significant museums around the world, in particular, the Museum of Modern Art’s major 1964 show of optical art, “The Responsive Eye.”

Throughout his practice, Agam rejected the notion of images as fixed. Across paintings, sculptures, fountains, and architectural commissions, he created works that changed according to the viewer’s position, frequently incorporating light, color, sound, and physical participation. His lenticular works, known as “Agamographs,” invite viewers to experience multiple images and realities within a single artwork, shifting perceptions.

Untitled, 1982
Yaacov Agam
Janet Rady Fine Art

Over the course of his career, Agam realized numerous public commissions, including the Fire and Water Fountain in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Square and a monumental fountain at Paris’s La Défense business district. He is also behind the design of the world’s largest menorah; standing 32 feet tall, it has been a prominent fixture in New York City’s annual Hanukkah celebrations since 1977. Just months before his death, Agam also received the 2026 Israel Prize for Visual Arts, the country’s highest cultural honor.

In 2017, the city of Rishon LeZion opened the Yaacov Agam Museum of Art, a permanent institution dedicated to the artist’s work and artistic philosophy. Following news of his death, Ruth Maccabee, the museum’s director and chief curator, said in a statement that Agam was “one of the rare artists who managed to change the way we perceive art.” She added: “He didn’t just create works; he created a new way of looking at the world. For him, movement, time and change were the heart of the work, and the viewer was an active partner in its completion.”

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Inside James Turrell’s Largest Museum Skyspace in Denmark https://ift.tt/CMw9WrY

“It’s big.” That was the first thing James Turrell said to Rebecca Matthews, director of ARoS Aarhus Art Museum (ARoS), when he stepped inside the dome of his newest Skyspace, As Seen Below (2026).

By any measure, As Seen Below is big: the largest Skyspace ever made for a museum, a dome more than 130 feet in diameter and 52 feet high, with a nearly 20-foot oculus opening to the sky. It is also Turrell’s 100th Skyspace—his signature genre of installation involving an enclosed room with a crisp ceiling cutout that frames the sky—and a marvel of architecture and engineering.

The work, which just opened at ARoS in time with the summer solstice, is a major milestone for the influential Light and Space artist, now 83. And it’s poised to position Aarhus, Denmark’s second city, as one of Europe’s must-visit art destinations. But to talk about the monumentality of the work is only to scratch the surface.

What happens inside Turrell’s As Seen Below

At the Skyspace’s inauguration on June 19th, Matthews described the work as “the sky itself, precisely held by the architecture, so that light becomes the material and time feels suspended.”

To reach As Seen Below, visitors descend into a dim underground passage, guided by tracks of light. After a short, curving walk downwards, an entryway appears and opens into the vast domed chamber, where a perfect circle of sky is cut from the center. “I always wanted to enter earth and emerge in the heavens,” Turrell told Artsy.

Inside, more than 1,100 light sources can illuminate the curved walls with a succession of glowing hues. Visitors may sit on cushions along a double-decker ring of cast concrete benches, walk around, or lie on the cool polished granite at the center of the floor and look straight up. Sitting still or lying down makes it more likely that a Ganzfeld-like effect will take over—in which the visual experience intensifies and one’s grasp of depth and scale begins to slip away. Yet Turrell is never prescriptive about how to experience a Skyspace. “Each visitor looks at it in their own way,” he told Artsy. “I do hope they give it attention, but the Skyspace asks nothing.”

During the daytime, a color sequence occurs periodically as a retractable lid slowly closes over the aperture in a motion that recalls an eclipse. The circle of sky is covered, replaced by what looks like a glowing orb: At times, it resembles a pearly white moon, at others, a radiant sphere that seems to float.

New colors arrive quickly, yet almost imperceptibly. Look down for a few seconds and the room has changed; look closely and the shift is so smooth the new color seems to have appeared without notice. Lavender turns pink, then fuchsia; steely blue gives way to purple, cyan, emerald, chartreuse. Turrell’s palette makes you hyperaware of color’s precision: Blue is not simply blue, but maybe cerulean, cobalt, or ultramarine.

Though there is stillness, the dome is not silent. The sound of a shuffled shoe or a sneeze ricochets through the space; a plane flying overhead is booming and immense. The sounds only add to the shared experience.

How to visit As Seen Below at ARoS

As Seen Below can be experienced in three main ways: during ARoS’s regular museum hours, at sunrise, or at sunset. During regular hours, the Skyspace is open to the elements, with the oculus framing the changing light and weather above the city; the color sequence runs every hour on the half-hour.

The most dramatic encounters take place at the separate sunrise and sunset sessions, bookable in advance. For these experiences, the aperture remains open, and Turrell’s light program is timed precisely to the changing atmosphere outside.

In Aarhus, where Nordic light drastically alters the length of the day, sunset can come as late as 10:30 p.m. in high summer, and sunrise as early as 4:30 a.m. During this time, the precisely timed experiences can last an hour; morning sessions are set to end at sunrise, and evening sessions begin as sunset commences. In winter, when daylight is scarce, the experience is shorter, and one need not arrive for a sunrise session quite so early. (This writer joined a sunrise session that began at 3:17 a.m.) There is also a café on site where visitors can purchase a beverage—be that coffee, tea, or a beer—to bring inside.

The museum is also preparing programming to take place within the dome, including concerts, yoga, meditation sessions, and activities for children.

Why As Seen Below was destined for ARoS

The work’s creation, led by architecture firm Schmidt Hammer Lassen, was as exacting as its effect. The dome’s interior was formed from large fiberglass shells, then covered with concrete, earth, and grass. To achieve the smooth consistency within the dome, a single craftsman painted and sanded the nearly 13,000 square feet of interior surface. As the project director Jette Birkeskov Mogensen put it: “We want to show the magic, but we don’t want to reveal the technique.”

For Turrell, each Skyspace is shaped by its context. “Each location and its latitude, the moisture content in the air, and city lights are unique and will yield a different program of our light inside in relation to the light in the atmosphere,” he told Artsy.

As Seen Below also resonates with the museum itself. “It’s absolutely been in our DNA as a museum to work on large-scale, deeply sensory, immersive environments that often have some kind of duration to them,” Matthews told Artsy. “With this work, we wanted to continue that trajectory, but also to offer something very site-specific, and something that offered our audiences a communal experience.”

The work also completes a larger story. The ARoS building was conceived around the concept of Dante’s Divine Comedy, with visitors moving through nine levels of art with the symbolic “heaven” of the roof: Olafur Eliasson’s Your Rainbow Panorama (2011), a circular colored glass walkway offering 360-degree views of Aarhus. Turrell’s Skyspace creates a counterpoint: inward, underground, and pulling us to stay still and look, not at the city, but up, into the heavens.

In remarks from Turrell, read on his behalf at As Seen Below’s inauguration, he noted that the work’s development stretched back to early conversations in 2011. Its realization was shaped by COVID, inflation, soaring construction costs, and even a contractor bankruptcy. As the project’s challenges mounted, he said, donors were asked to give more, new supporters were found, and the city and the monarchy were critical in bringing the work to completion.

The awe-inspiring Skyspace is poised to boost museum attendance and international visitors to Aarhus. Matthews’s ambitions, however, are more human in scope. “I hope that people remember sitting beneath this Jutland sky with someone they love,” she said in a speech at As Seen Below’s inauguration. “I hope families return at different moments in their lives, and I hope they find something new each time. And I hope that children growing up in Aarhus today will one day look at this dome and feel that it has simply always been part of their city, part of their lives, part of their memory, not merely a monument but woven into our stories, a shared cultural inheritance.”

“I think we’ve always had the sky,” she offered. “I think James Turrell has taught us how to see it.”

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What Sold at Art Basel 2026 https://ift.tt/8qLhKy2

On Sunday, June 21, Art Basel 2026 concluded after five days at Messe Basel. The fair’s 55th edition brought together 290 galleries from 43 countries, presenting works by more than 4,000 artists across several standout presentations.

Acquisitions across the fair ranged from eight-figure Modern masters to five-figure emerging debuts, with particular momentum—as tends to be the case at this high-profile fair—for storied 20th-century artists. There was also plenty of interest in works shown in Basel Exclusive, the fair’s new initiative through which galleries reserve significant works specifically for their debut at the fair (though it has been reported that not all galleries complied). The week was also shaped by reflections on David Hockney’s legacy following the artist’s death earlier in June, with several significant works by the artist changing hands.

“The energy of the fair feels brisk, with strong engagement across the variety of important works we are presenting in Basel,” said Millicent Wilner, managing director of Gagosian, one of Artsy’s best booths from the fair. Fabrizio Padovani, co-founder of Italian heavyweight P420, was similarly effusive: “The fair has been incredibly dynamic right from the very first hours.”

The fair’s highest reported sale was at Hauser & Wirth: Pablo Picasso’s Le peintre et son modèle dans un paysage (1963), sold with an asking price of $35 million. That figure far exceeds the next highest transaction—a $20 million Gerhard Richter work also at Hauser & Wirth. It also tops last year’s most expensive sale, a David Hockney piece that went for $13–$17 million. Below, we round up the top sales from Art Basel 2026.

Top sales at Art Basel 2026

Hauser & Wirth reported 35 works sold by 4 p.m. on preview day alone. As well as the leading Picasso and Richter transactions, other sales included:

• Cy Twombly’s On Returning from Tonnicoda (1973) for $5 million.
• Twombly’s Sperlonga Drawing (1959) for $2.5 million.
• Louise Bourgeois’s Les Fleurs (2009) for $2.5 million.
• Philip Guston’s The Courtyard (1946), presented through Basel Exclusive, for an undisclosed price.
• Nairy Baghramian’s Side Leaps_Spatial Compositions for €600,000 ($678,000), to a Swiss collection.
• Zhang Enli’s Gentleman in a Hat (2026) for $350,000, to a prominent West Coast U.S. foundation.
• George Rouy’s Procession I (2026) for £300,000 ($381,000), co-sold with Hannah Barry Gallery and presented in Unlimited.

Almine Rech’s sales were led by Pablo Picasso's Satyre, Pan et nymphe (1938) for $6–$6.5 million, presented through Basel Exclusive. Other reported sales included:

• A painting by Serge Poliakoff for €600,000–€700,000 ($678,000–$791,000).
• A painting by Martha Jungwirth for €550,000–€600,000 ($622,000–$678,000).
• A painting by Ha Chong-Hyun for $400,000–$450,000.
• A Picasso ceramic for $350,000–$450,000.
• A painting by Javier Calleja for €350,000–€400,000 ($396,000–$452,000).
• Two sculptures by Leonora Carrington for €170,000–€200,000 ($192,000–$226,000) each.
• A painting by Youngju Joung for $75,000–$80,000.
• A painting by Ji Xin for $65,000–$75,000.
• A work by Taryn Simon for $35,000–$40,000.

GRAY’s sales were led by David Hockney’s Studio Interior #2 (2014) for $8.5 million. The gallery also sold Hockney’s The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (twenty eleven) – 31 May, No. 1 (2011) for $650,000 and Kenneth Noland’s No End (1961) for $2 million.

Thaddaeus Ropac’s sales were led by Pierre Soulages’s Peinture 146 x 97 cm, 31 janvier 1954 (1954) for “above” $3 million. Other reported sales included:

• Helen Frankenthaler’s Sudden Wave (1982) for around $3 million.
• Lucio Fontana’s Concetto spaziale, Attese (1965) for €1.8 million ($2.03 million).
• Fontana’s Cavallo (1936) for €780,000 ($881,000).
• Alex Katz’s Larry No. 1 (1974) for $1.6 million.
• Katz’s Ann (1978) for $1.2 million.
• Georg Baselitz’s Ach, Mädchen grün (2010) for €1.2 million ($1.36 million).
• A Baselitz ink pen work on paper, Ohne Titel (2025), for €85,000 ($96,000).
• Robert Rauschenberg’s Same Time Piece (Galvanic Suite) (1990) for $950,000.
• Two works by Martha Jungwirth—both titled Untitled (Berggasse 19) (2026)—for €540,000 ($610,000) each.
• A third Jungwirth work, Untitled (2026), for €200,000 ($226,000).
• Antony Gormley’s HERE (2024) for £525,000 ($667,000).
• Sean Scully’s Sea Wall Blue (2025) for $500,000.
• Leoncillo Leonardi’s Tre Tagli (A, B, C) (1967) for €270,000 ($305,000).
• Adrian Ghenie’s Study for “The Morning Walk” (2026) for €200,000 ($226,000).
• Ghenie’s Self-Portrait with Paintbrush (2026) for €100,000 ($113,000).
• Joan Snyder’s Midsummer Song (2025) for $165,000.
• Robert Longo’s Study of Swans Wing (2026) for $90,000.

Tituba's Handmaidens, 2025
Kara Walker
Sprüth Magers

Sprüth Magers’s sales were led by Josef Albers’s Homage to the Square: Between 2 Scarlets (1962) for €2.5 million ($2.83 million), to a U.S. private collection. Other sales reported by the gallery included:

• Donald Judd’s Untitled (1989) for $600,000.
• John Baldessari’s Emoji Series: INT. FRANK’S PENTHOUSE – EVENING BOBBY Reverse close-up. (2017) for $500,000 to a European private collection through Basel Exclusive.
• Jenny Holzer’s Truisms: Push yourself to the limit... (2019) for $450,000.
• Kara Walker’s Tituba’s Handmaiden (2025) for $400,000 to a private collection in Europe.
• Rosemarie Trockel’s Morning Glory (2022) for €430,000 ($486,000).
• Cyprien Gaillard’s Life in the cracks (Part 5) (2026) for €110,000 ($124,000).

Knowing My Enemy, 2002
Tracey Emin
White Cube

White Cube’s sales were led by Lynne Drexler’s Untitled (1960) for $2.5 million. Other reported sales included:

• Doris Salcedo’s Untitled (2008) for $1.35 million.
• Tracey Emin’s Knowing My Enemy (2002) for £1.25 million ($1.59 million), presented in Unlimited.
• Emin’s Where is Home (2017) for £750,000 ($953,000).
• Emin’s Mother (2014) for £85,000 ($108,000).
• Cai Guo-Qiang’s Blue Pine Forest No. 1 (2022) for $750,000.
• Gormley’s STALL (2024) for £600,000 ($762,000).
• Shara Hughes’s Just Beyond (2026) for $450,000.
• Isamu Noguchi’s Figure Emerging (1982/84) for $450,000.
• Danh Vō’s Untitled (2023) for €260,000 ($294,000).
• Mona Hatoum’s Still Life (medical cabinet) VII (2026) for £185,000 ($235,000).
• Ibrahim Mahama’s Kulala (2026) for €100,000 ($113,000).
• TARWUK’s MRTISKLAAH_ećšiloduČ (2026) for $100,000.
• Sara Flores’s Untitled (Maya Kené 13, 2023) for $90,000.

Xavier Hufkens’s sales were led by an Yves Klein sculpture for €2.25 million ($2.54 million). The gallery also sold a Bourgeois sculpture for $2.2 million and a small Nicolas Party painting for approximately $200,000 through the Basel Exclusive initiative. In Unlimited, the gallery co-sold a triptych by Ulala Imai in collaboration with Nonaka-Hill and Karma for $275,000. “Art Basel remains the most important fair of the year,” said Xavier Hufkens. “You feel it the moment the doors open. It starts strong and it stays strong.”

Yares Art sold Helen Frankenthaler’s Gliding Figure (1961) for $2 million, Robert Motherwell’s Scarlet Open (1972) for $1.5 million, Joan Mitchell’s Untitled (1958) for $1.2 million, and Larry Poons’s Toccata Mambo (2014) for $190,000.

Nintendo #4, 2026
Jonas Wood
David Kordansky Gallery

13:09, 2026
Lucy Bull
David Kordansky Gallery

David Kordansky’s sales were led by Jonas Wood’s Nintendo #4 (2026) for $1.5 million. Other reported sales included:

• Sam Gilliam’s Untitled (2018) for between $1 million and $1.25 million.
• Rashid Johnson’s Untitled Broken Men (2018) for $525,000–$575,000.
• Jonas Wood’s Shio Animal Shelf #1 (2025) for $450,000.
• Shara Hughes’ Up At Night (2025) for $425,000–$475,000.
• Adam Pendleton’s Untitled (Composition) (2025–2026) for $300,000–$350,000.
• Jenna Gribbon’s Mauve Merge (2026) for $250,000.
• Mary Weatherford’s Dropping Down the Universe (2026) for $250,000.
• Hilary Pecis’s Cat House (2026) for $205,000.
• Betty Woodman’s Scandinavia (2000) for $165,000.
• Lucy Bull’s 13:09 (2026) for $125,000–$175,000.
• Sayre Gomez’s Lotus 2 (2026) for $125,000–$175,000.
• Lesley Vance’s Untitled (2026) for $110,000.
• Maia Cruz Palileo’s Once Again There Was No Time (2026) for $95,000.
• Sam McKinniss’s Nicole Kidman with Photographers (2026) for $95,000.
• McKinniss’s World Trade Center (2026) for $30,000.
• Chase Hall’s A Day at the Zoo (2026), sold for an undisclosed price.
• Ivan Morley’s Trees (2026) for $75,000–$100,000 and From A True Tale (2024) for $30,000–50,000.
• Jennifer Guidi’s Moving, Changing, Flowing (2026) for $60,000.
• Richard Tuttle’s One Panel Produces Two Lights #1–4 (2021, set of four) for $40,000–$60,000.
• Huma Bhabha’s Untitled (2026) for $40,000–$60,000.
• Tom of Finland’s Untitled (from Kake vol. 02 – “The Sexy Sunbather”) (1968) for $50,000.
• Tristan Unrau’s Correction (2026) for $30,000–$50,000.
• Mai-Thu Perret’s Dragons take to their waters, tigers return to their hills (2025) for $30,000–$50,000.
• Evan Holloway’s Love You Anyway (2026) for $35,000.
• Raul Guerrero’s Brasserie Lipp: Paris, France (2026) for $25,000.
• Jared Buckhiester’s And Not Knowing a Soul In Town (2017) for $17,000.
• William E. Jones’s Sailor at Glory Hole (2023) for $10,000–$15,000.

Pace Gallery’s sales were led by two editions of Lynda Benglis’s Power Tower (2019) for $1.4 million each. Benglis will be the subject of a major retrospective at Kunstmuseum Basel opening next March. Other reported sales included:

• Lee Ufan’s Response (2024) for $1.05 million.
• Robert Longo’s Untitled (Gerhard’s Forest) (2026) for $750,000.
• Larry Bell’s Glass Box with Ellipses (1964) for $475,000.
• Kenneth Noland’s Half & Half (1967) for $500,000.
• Loie Hollowell’s Blue Brain on mauve rose shoulders (2026) for $450,000.
• Nigel Cooke’s Nemesis (2026) for $385,000.
• Elmgreen & Dragset’s Speed (2026) for €260,000 ($294,000).
• Joel Shapiro’s Untitled (2013) for $250,000.
• Marina Perez Simão’s Untitled (2026) for $195,000.
• Alicja Kwade’s Strange Attractor (2026) for €175,000 ($198,000).
• Two sculptures by Arlene Shechet —Brass Bea (2026) and Headstrong TBD (2026)—for $130,000 each.
• Pam Evelyn’s Bumble (2026) for $95,000.
• Mika Tajima’s Art d’Ameublement (Truneos) (2026) for $90,000.
• Maysha Mohamedi’s Here, My Dear (2026) and Lauren Quin’s Over Umbra (2026) for $75,000 each.
• Mao Yan’s Portrait with Hairpins (2026) for $68,000.
• Yto Barrada’s (Untitled) Three Brown, Two Green and Four Yellow Squares on Pink (2025) for €40,000 ($45,000).
• Two works by Irving Penn—Sitting Nude Rear, New York (1993) for $40,000 and Fath Detail, Paris (1950) for $25,000.
• Trevor Paglen’s Near Salt Point (undated) (2026) for $7,500.
• A David Hockney work presented through Basel Exclusive, for an undisclosed price.

Karma sold Jonas Wood’s Bonsai #13 (2026) for $825,000. Other reported sales included:

• Kathleen Ryan’s Bad Lime (Rock Candy) (2026) for $200,000.
• A work by Nicolas Party for $150,000.
• Maja Ruznic’s D is for Descent (2026) for $100,000.
• A work by Woody De Othello for $95,000.
• A work by Jane Dickson for $55,000.

David Zwirner’s primary market sales were led by Elizabeth Peyton’s Transmission (E, rose) (2026) for $1.2 million through Basel Exclusive, alongside an Isa Genzken installation presented in Unlimited for €1.2 million ($1.36 million), acquired by a European museum. Other primary market sales included:

• Two new paintings by Victor Man, one of which sold for €1 million ($1.13 million).
• Three paintings by Josef Albers for $650,000, $800,000, and $850,000 respectively.
• A new painting by Luc Tuymans for $800,000.
• A painting by Steven Shearer for $700,000.
• A painting by Chris Ofili for $650,000.
• A new painting by Amy Sillman for $650,000.
• A new painting by Dana Schutz for $350,000 and a work on paper for $100,000.
• A new work on paper by Lisa Yuskavage for $320,000.
• Two new paintings by Lucas Arruda for $280,000 each.
• A new painting by Suzan Frecon for $250,000.
• Two paintings by Francis Alÿs for an undisclosed price.
• Two photographs by Philip-Lorca diCorcia for $30,000 and $50,000 each.
• Six works by Wolfgang Tillmans for between $12,000 and $100,000.
• Works on paper by Al Taylor and Tomma Abts for $30,000 each, and an Alice Neel print for $20,000.

The gallery also reported a range of secondary market sales for undisclosed prices, including works by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Joan Mitchell, Yayoi Kusama, Gerhard Richter, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cecily Brown, On Kawara, Donald Judd, Ruth Asawa, Dan Flavin, Cy Twombly, Sigmar Polke, Michaël Borremans, Mamma Andersson, Richard Serra, Raymond Pettibon, and Carol Bove, among others.

Gagosian sold Willem de Kooning’s No title (1984) for a high seven-figure sum to an important private collection in Asia within the first hour of the preview.

Galerie Lelong & Co. sold a David Hockney painting for approximately €1 million ($1.13 million) through Basel Exclusive. Other reported sales included Etel Adnan’s Sans titre (2016) and Jaume Plensa’s Green Hermit (2024), each for between €300,000 and €400,000 ($339,000–$452,000). It also sold Fabienne Verdier’s Memories of Norway 5 (2012) for between €200,000 and €300,000 ($226,000–$339,000).

Kukje Gallery sold Lee Ufan’s Response (2024) for between $1 million and $1.2 million.

More key sales from Art Basel 2026

Lisson Gallery’s sales were led by a Carmen Herrera sculpture, Gemini (Black) (1971/2019), for $750,000. Other reported sales included:

• Two works by Anish Kapoor—Iridescent Pink (2025) and Cobalt Blue to Light Oriental Blue (2026)—for £625,000 ($794,000) each.
• Hélio Oiticica’s Untitled (1958) for $500,000.
• Ha Chong-Hyun’s Conjunction 23-83 (2023) for $230,000.
• Leiko Ikemura’s Mothergirl in Yellow (2024) for €200,000 ($226,000) and Yellowscape (2020) for €150,000 ($170,000), along with a bronze, Golden Rabbit (2023), also for €150,000 ($170,000).
• Ryan Gander’s I’ve felt everything I’m going to feel — The Unspeakable World (2026) for £200,000 ($254,000), presented in Unlimited.
• Pedro Reyes’s Tonaltepetl (2026) for $110,000.
• Christopher Le Brun’s Sun Notes II (2025) for £90,000 ($114,000).
• Two works by Masaomi Yasunaga—Empty Vessel (2024) and Crumbling (2024)—for $37,000 each.
• Laure Prouvost’s Dreaming Till the End (2026) for €35,000 ($40,000).
• Sarah Cunningham’s Untitled (2024) for $34,000.
• A Hiroshi Sugimoto photograph, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (2006), for $25,000.
• Dalton Paula’s Funeral (2025) for $18,000.

Study for the Great Ladies, 1973
Judy Chicago
Jessica Silverman

Jessica Silverman’s sales were led by Loie Hollowell’s Quinacridone red brain above pink-blue water (2026) for $450,000. Other reported sales included Judy Chicago’s Study for the Great Ladies (1973) for $225,000, a work by Atsushi Kaga for $125,000, and a work by Rebecca Manson for $120,000, and a work by Hayal Pozanti’s Envoys From Deep Time (2026) for $55,000 through Basel Exclusive. It also sold works by Clare Rojas, Hayal Pozanti, Julie Buffalohead, Rupy C. Tut, Woody De Othello, Rebecca Ness, Andrea Bowers, Marilou Schultz, Trevor Paglen, and Koak.

Tina Kim Gallery reported sales of a Park Seo-Bo painting for $350,000–450,000, a Ha Chong-Hyun work for $300,000, and three Maia Ruth Lee paintings for $20,000–25,000 each.

Lehmann Maupin’s sales were led by Liza Lou's Chronotope (2026) for $250,000–300,000. The gallery also placed Heidi Bucher's Libellenobjekt (Dragonfly Object) with a U.K.-based collector on the occasion of the Swiss artist's centennial year. Other reported sales included:

• Two paintings by McArthur Binion—Stellucca (2012) and dna:study (2025)—for $150,000–$200,000 each, to European collectors.
• Calida Rawles’s It Never Entered My Mind I Had to Protect It (2026) for $150,000–$200,000, placed with a prominent U.S. museum.
• Four works by Rana Begum, whom the gallery began representing in May, sold within hours of the opening for undisclosed prices.

Perrotin reported sales of 41 works on the fair’s VIP day, led by one undisclosed work at $1.5 million. Other reported sales were led by a Bharti Kher painting for between $180,000 and $195,000. Other reported sales included a painting by Young-Il Ahn for between $70,000 and $80,000, and works by Paul Pfeiffer and Gabriel de la Mora for between $30,000 and $60,000 each.

Berry Campbell’s sales were led by Mary Abbott’s Lucy (c. 1956–58) for $500,000. Other reported sales included Judith Godwin’s No. 10 (1958) for $375,000 and Pat Passlof’s Untitled (1956) for $75,000. Christine Berry, gallery co-founder, noted that with the Kunstmuseum Basel’s concurrent Frankenthaler exhibition on view, “attention has extended to [other] 20th-century women artists undergoing critical reassessment.”

Other notable sales from Art Basel 2026

Bianco, 1965
Agostino Bonalumi
Cardi Gallery

Lucy, c. 1956-58
Mary Abbott
Berry Campbell Gallery

• Cardi Gallery sold Jannis Kounellis’s Untitled (2014) for €300,000 ($339,000), a work by Vincenzo Agnetti for €120,000 ($136,000), and Agostino Bonalumi’s Bianco (1965) and Rosso (1978) for €70,000 ($79,000) each. It also sold an unspecified number of works by Davide Balliano for between €20,000 and €40,000 ($23,000–$45,000) each.
• P420 reported sales of an unspecified number of works by Adelaide Cioni, Ana Lupas, and Filippo de Pisis for between €15,000 and €65,000 ($17,000–$73,000) apiece.
• P.P.O.W sold Ishi Glinsky’s Inertia – Here and Home (2026) for a price between $50,000 and $75,000 to a prominent U.S.-based collector with a private foundation.
• Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel reported a series of sales, including Marina Rheingantz’s Pé do Ouvido (2026) for $80,000 through Basel Exclusive, Antonio Társis’s Untitled (The colour side of the flames) for $32,000, Marcia Falcão’s Malandra não Para XXXVII (2026) for $27,000, and Sophia Loeb’s A Beleza nasce da chama (2025) for $10,000.
• At Casey Kaplan, a selection of works by Patricia Fernández Carcedo through Basel Exclusive sold out, with works priced around $20,000.

Browse a curated collection of works at Art Basel 2026 here.

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