Our 6 Favorite Artworks from Women-Led Galleries Now https://ift.tt/Qm96Trl

Rosé and Apricots, 2025
Larica Schnell
Chrissy Moore Art Advisory

Mother to Us All, 2024
Charlotte Evans
Marrow Gallery

This Women’s History Month, Artsy launched Women-Led Galleries Now. The new showcase features more than 300 galleries presenting works by emerging and mid-career women artists from around the world.

To mark the moment, Artsy’s content team went browsing—not as editors, but as would-be collectors—and shared the works we couldn’t stop thinking about. The result is this list. From a painting that captures the bittersweet feeling of a season turning to a tablescape that makes you want to immediately throw a dinner party, these are the works at the top of our wish list.

Charlotte Evans, If Winter Comes, Can Spring Be Far Behind?, 2026

Presented by Marrow Gallery

If Winter Comes, Can Spring Be Far Behind?, 2026
Charlotte Evans
Marrow Gallery

Here in Berlin, the sun has just come out and changed the entire mood of the city. Even if it’s still a “fool’s spring,” it’s a reminder of weather’s enormous influence on one’s outlook. This painting by Charlotte Evans portrays a dark scene: undefined shapes in burgundy, chestnut, and olive that might represent the darkness of a tough winter. Meanwhile, in the foreground, bright yellow and turquoise flowers poke through the murky background. With their creamy shades and graphic outlines, these blooms create a surprising sense of harmony: The signs of new growth appear brighter as the cold season eases off. Evans’s title If Winter Comes, Can Spring Be Far Behind? has this in mind. As the cycle inevitably shifts again, this painting’s hopeful mantra is invaluable sustenance.

—Josie Thaddeus-Johns, lead editor, Berlin

Melissa Joseph, Aunties Inside (Hand-Embellished, Edition 10 of 10), 2021

Presented by ART FOR CHANGE

Aunties Inside (Hand-Embellished, Edition 10 of 10), 2021
Melissa Joseph
ART FOR CHANGE

I love this work by The Artsy Vanguard alum Melissa Joseph because it reminds me of something very familiar: the quiet power of aunties. Growing up in an Indian family, aunties are everywhere—in the kitchen, on the sofa gossiping, giving life advice, and holding the whole family together in ways that often go unnoticed.

Seeing Joseph center them like this feels incredibly resonant. The way the women hold court perfectly captures the subtle authority and warmth aunties have in family spaces.

The piece is based on a photo of the artist’s own aunts, and the original work the print is based on includes fabric and embroidery mirrors that they gave her. That kind of intimacy is familiar to anyone from the diaspora, where family memories and objects carry deep meaning. Living with this print would feel like home, in particular, like walking into a room at a family gathering where the aunties are already there and the stories are about to start.

—Arun Kakar, senior art market editor, London

Jongsuk Yoon, Bom, 2026

Presented by Marian Goodman Gallery

Bom, 2026
Jongsuk Yoon
Marian Goodman Gallery

I first saw Jongsuk Yoon’s paintings at her U.S. solo debut, “Yellow May,” at Marian Goodman Gallery Los Angeles in 2024. I was instantly taken with her large-scale, abstracted landscapes, in which bright and pastel color fields suggest mountains, water, earth, and sky. A sense of harmony prevails across her dreamy, brushy compositions, even when they depict sites of conflict: The Korean German painter has previously referenced North Korea’s Kumgangsan, or “Diamant Mountain,” as a symbol of the country’s traumatic division.

The title of this buoyant oil painting, however, translates to “spring.” It features pink and yellow triangles that just kiss at their bottoms, the yellow form floating ever so lightly above that streak of green. As the bright orange backdrop comes at the viewer, the blue curve along the bottom, and its white lip, offer a sense of grounding. I’d love to live with this painting and study its individual brushstrokes, layers, textures, and color collisions, which will reveal themselves only gradually, day by day.

—Alina Cohen, editor, New York

Larica Schnell, A Feast for Dames, 2025

Presented by Chrissy Moore Art Advisory

A Feast for Dames, 2025
Larica Schnell
Chrissy Moore Art Advisory

As spring approaches and my focus shifts toward hosting at home, this contemporary still life by Larica Schnell feels like an image from my 2026 Pinterest board. With its tapered candles, champagne saucers, and coquette-style ribbons, the lavish tablescape is the epitome of the hyper-feminine dinner party aesthetic. Schnell’s vibrant acrylic brushstrokes capture the ambience of an evening with friends.

The carefully curated table is both celebratory and aspirational, mirroring the tone of its title, A Feast for Dames. Within this scene, Schnell nods to a culture of overconsumption, depicting McDonald’s fries and glasses of Pinot Noir; she juxtaposes the elegance of a formal dinner with the mundanity of fast food. The central imagery of a cake, adorned with red cherries and playful ribbons, feels very symbolic. It serves as a critique of excess, bringing to mind the famous quote, “let them eat cake.”

—Adeola Gay, senior curatorial manager, London

Anna Freeman Bentley, Study for illusion never changed, 2023

Presented by Canopy Collections

Study for illusion never changed , 2023
Anna Freeman Bentley
Canopy Collections

Nothing is alive in Study for illusion never changed (2023) except, perhaps, the room itself. In Anna Freeman Bentley’s oil-on-paper work, the scene is devoid of people, but not of motion and warmth. The room itself becomes the protagonist: pink, fleshy, and inscrutable.

The title adds to the sense of mystery—is the room the eponymous illusion? Who left the door ajar? I never get tired of looking at art that raises more questions than it answers, and this plush, rosy room is both a sweet accent piece (I would put it above my couch) and the type of work I could inspect for ages, trying to pick up on clues that explain the title and the tension of this interior scene.

—Sydney Gelman, copywriter, New York

Nicolina Morra, reverie in blue (pink flamingos), 2025

Presented by Harsh Collective

reverie in blue (pink flamingos), 2025
Nicolina Morra
Harsh Collective

I have a soft spot for small works. I love their intimacy, the way they demand you look closely. Nicolina Morra’s reverie in blue (pink flamingos) (2025) hooked me first with its verticality: the canvas is so narrow that the eye at its center seems squeezed into the frame, distorted by the pressure of its own constraints. The title suggests that the image is drawn from John Waters’s 1972 film Pink Flamingos, likely a close-up on its star, Divine. This adds layers of camp, audacity, and transgressive glamour to the painting. Even taken out of context, Divine’s eye is pretty and unsettling in equal measure—bedecked in glittery pale blue eyeshadow, almost Cinderella-like, with a dramatically arched brow that reads as both a cosmetic choice and a kind of defiance. There’s something here about beauty and conformity, about performance and control. The palette is dreamy; the cropping is severe. I could look at this painting 10 different times and always find something new to say about it.

—Casey Lesser, senior director of content, New York

Explore more of Women-Led Galleries Now.

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American artist Lauren Halsey’s “sister dreamer” sculpture park opens in Los Angeles. https://ift.tt/DaLCSBx

American installation artist Lauren Halsey has unveiled sister dreamer, her architectural monument and sculpture park in Los Angeles. The project, curated by Christine Y. Kim and presented in collaboration with the Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND), opens today at Western Avenue and 76th Street and will be on view through November 2027. The sculpture park, whose full title is sister dreamer, lauren halsey’s architectural ode to tha surge n splurge of south central los angeles, pays homage to the neighborhood where the artist and her family have lived for generations. Halsey is co-represented by David Kordansky Gallery and Gagosian. She continues to live and work in Los Angeles.

The sculpture park is two decades in the making; the artist originally developed the idea as an architecture student in 2006. The site consists of interlocking concrete panels that form a courtyard built around a water feature. Fruit trees, vegetables, and native plants appear inside and around the perimeter. At the entrance, eight sphinxes in carved relief sit alongside Egyptian-style Hathoric columns inscribed with local symbols. They bear the faces of Halsey’s mentors, family friends, personal heroes, and other important members of the South Central community.

“I grew up on Western Avenue, in the area surrounding sister dreamer,” the artist said in a press statement. “It was and still is a beautiful environment, a place and time of joy, genius, and freedom. Throughout my life, many buildings were burned down, abandoned, left empty. Yet what always stood out to me were the people who informally activated these open spaces: selling Christmas trees, running ad-hoc barbecue pop ups, holding church services, or using it as an ephemeral space to sell hundreds of mix CDs. The community understood that these empty lots could be used for different functions and needs. And it is this same ingenuity, imaginative capacity, and everyday brilliance that sister dreamer celebrates and is focused on activating for others in my community.”

A slate of programming will activate the site with film screenings, tutoring and youth-engagement events, jazz nights, and other festivities developed for the local community by Summaeverythang Community Center, Halsey’s nonprofit organization.

sister dreamer is the most ambitious project to date for LAND, an organization that commissions large-scale, site-specific public art installations in nontraditional sites across Los Angeles. Entry is always free of charge to the public. “It’s been a privilege to work in support of Lauren Halsey and her incomparable vision to present sister dreamer,” said Laura Hyatt, the director at LAND, in a press statement. “Our work at LAND would not be possible without artists like her, who understand art-making as both commemorative and life-affirming, urgent and community-serving.”

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At the Guggenheim, Carol Bove Bends Metal—and Minimalism—to Her Will https://ift.tt/LHdXmet

One of the earliest works in Carol Bove’s first-ever retrospective, which opened at the Guggenheim Museum on March 5th, looks more suited to a domestic setting than to Frank Lloyd Wright’s grand rotunda. The sculpture, How People Get Power (2002), comprises a small mid-century modern shelving unit that displays books from the late 1960s and early ’70s. Si Kahn’s titular 1970 guide for community organizers appears alongside Sol LeWitt’s 1976 artist book Modular Drawings and a book about nonviolent resistance and social change. Accompanying these volumes are a few ambiguous objects—a prism made of wood and string and a cube wrapped in brown paper—that quietly nod to the principles exemplified by LeWitt’s work, and to the ethos of Minimalism at large.

Senior curator of contemporary art Katherine Brinson has organized the show, which is on view through August 2nd, in reverse chronology around the museum’s rotunda; it crescendos with the artist’s earliest work in the sunny oculus. Here, Bove’s bookshelf installations like How People Get Power embody the forces that have galvanized the artist’s practice for the last 25 years: She has examined the countercultural movements that shaped her own childhood; subverted the sculptural tropes of 1960s minimalism; and reoriented the relationship between viewers and the exhibition space.

Early life

Bove was born in Geneva, while her American parents were living abroad. She grew up in the Bay Area of the 1970s and ’80s, just after the region’s radical approach to activism, sexuality, drugs, art, and family reshaped American norms. Bove’s father was a house painter and her mother an unpublished poet, and the artist has synthesized both mediums throughout her career via a poetic, playful approach to color, space, and form: at first to better understand the dissipating haze of her parents’ cultural milieu, and later in the monumental metal and wood sculptures for which she has become known.

After dropping out of Berkeley High School, Bove worked in restaurants and took odd jobs before she enrolled, in her late twenties, in a BFA program at New York University. After graduation, she turned to imagery in the Playboy magazines she’d discovered beneath her parents’ bed as a child—each of which included a rejection note her mother had received for her poetry submissions. Bove was overcome by the models’ impenetrable gazes throughout the pages, and she drew their faces in very pale shades of ink. Her resulting works, including Tomorrow Never Knows (2002) and Twiggy (2004), are among her most delicate and ethereal pieces. These drawings formed her first full body of adult work.

Bove’s style takes inspiration from minimalism

Bove’s bookshelf sculptures grew out of her desire to understand the cultural context, Brinson explains, of “those women that [Bove] was communing with across time in the drawings.” As Bove recontextualized domestic objects like the bookshelves, she also reworked the minimalist tropes of her predecessors. Composition with my Mother’s Spiritual Manual (2002) replaces LeWitt-style cubes with Knoll tables, while Touching (2001) replaces the bricks in Carl Andre’s austere floor arrangements with books, infusing minimalism’s arrangements of raw materials and basic shapes with content.

The artist also makes more literal art historical references throughout the show, as artworks from the Guggenheim’s collection and others appear alongside her own. Bove has included paintings, drawings, and sculptures by Agnes Martin, Édouard Vuillard, Lionel Ziprin, Bruce Conner, and Arnaldo Pomodoro, as well as a permanent but rarely revealed installation by Joan Miró and Josep Llorens Artigas. With this gesture, the artist acknowledges the fact that artistic practice doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but in continual dialogue with art history.

One of the works comes from Bove’s personal collection. As a child, she was so transfixed by Richard Berger’s My Couch (1976)—a ghostly sculpture of a tufted couch created by precisely hung beaded threads—at the Berkeley Art Museum, that she later tracked down the artist to acquire the work herself. It hangs near the top of the Guggenheim. It’s echoed by an identical couch that Bove made for visitors to take a seat on a lower ramp.

By attending to viewers’ bodies in this and other seating arrangements throughout the museum, Bove upends traditional exhibition models. She pushes against the dictates of modernism—that require eyes to see without the presence of a body—and what some critics have described as the overly confrontational, even hostile nature of minimal art. By instead creating moments of pause and reflection, Bove’s site-specific furniture interventions further blur the boundaries between the art objects on view, the museum’s systems of display, and the trappings of domestic interiors.

Like the bookshelf sculptures, Bove’s intimately scaled found-object arrangements—made of seashells, feathers, driftwood, metal, and more—similarly suggest visual poems. The Oracle (2010), for example, features a selection of seashells ornamented with spikes and curlicues on a metal armature, while Figure (2009) attaches the ends of two peacock feathers to a tall metal rod, such that two piercing eyes stare at passersby.

“The language of support and display, which [as a curator] you usually want to disappear and not distract from the object, becomes part of the sculpture itself,” Brinson notes. “It’s a very simple act, but it’s weirdly radical in its simplicity.” In works like Peel’s foe, not a set animal, laminates a tone of sleep (2013), sculpture and base become one and the same. Bove inset a concrete plinth with hollow brass cubes, evoking both a model for a brutalist building and a sculpture by LeWitt.

Bove’s later career and crushed metal sculptures

During this time in the mid-2010s, and about halfway down the Guggenheim’s ramp, the artist began to create much larger sculptures and installations. Her works grew heavier as she bent and crushed multi-ton pieces of found and fabricated metal. These sculptures, which defy material expectations, became emblematic of Bove’s practice and earned her international attention. In 2013, she mounted a commission on New York’s High Line and enjoyed concurrent solo exhibitions at Macarrone Gallery and the Museum of Modern Art. These shows led Brinson to start considering a retrospective. In the over 10 years that followed, Bove’s practice has grown considerably, alongside her playful reconfigurations of modernist sculpture.

In 10 Hours (2019), one of the artist’s characteristic crumpled beams, coated in bright yellow urethane paint, appears casually draped over two sheets of weathered steel that are propped against one another like a Richard Serra sculpture. Such compositions strike a delicate balance and appear to defy gravity.

In these works, Bove often sources her palette from art history: yellow from Willem de Kooning, red from Alexander Calder, pale purple from Monet. She works at Serra’s grand scale, with John Chamberlain’s aptitude for compression, and invokes John McCracken’s “finish fetish.” The resulting works communicate in a language of abstraction that shares certain etymological roots with traditional modernism. Yet Bove’s uncanny juxtapositions destabilize our ideas about physics and the world we know, creating a unique vocabulary all their own.

The exhibition begins, or you might say ends, with Sweet Charity (2026), an installation conceived specifically for the Guggenheim’s High Gallery. Within this dense forest of 20-foot crumpled beams in ocher, chartreuse, orange, and verdant green, viewers become ensconced in a meditative moment of quiet wonder. Here, and in the artist’s new anodized aluminum wall works—which feature arrangements of circles, squares, and diamonds in ever-intoxicating colors and punctuate the entirety of the exhibition—Bove allows your eye to rest on something not surprising or subversive but soothing. She strikes the simple harmony of a major chord.

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Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera will be subjects of a new Netflix series. https://ift.tt/JT8j7ko

A scripted Netflix series about Frida Kahlo’s tumultuous relationship with her husband, Diego Rivera, is in the works. The show which is yet to be titled, is an adaptation of the novel Frida: The Award-Winning Novel about the Colourful and Captivating Life of Frida Kahlo by French writer Claire Berest.

According to Netflix, the series will depict how the legendary Mexican artist couple’s love, betrayals, and work were informed by the social and political environments of the time. It is not intended to portray the familiar grooves of Kahlo and Rivera’s lives and art, but rather uncover the humanity inside them. The project is early in development, and actors have not yet been announced. Patricia Riggen and Gabriel Ripstein will serve as co-directors, while Mónica Lozano of Alebrije Producciones will produce. María Renée Prudencio will serve as head writer.

“The ambition of this project is unprecedented,” said Carolina Leconte, vice president of content at Netflix Mexico, in an interview with Variety, who broke the news. “We want to show a real Frida – a Frida who seems to step out of the screen and take you by the hand so you can live her story alongside her, during one of the most significant eras in this country: a Mexico that Frida and Diego placed on the world map.”

Kahlo has long been the fascination of filmmakers and visual storytellers. Past projects about her life and work include director Julie Taymor’s 2002 biopic “Frida” starring Salma Hayek, which was nominated for several Academy Awards; a 2024 documentary of the same name by filmmaker Carla Gutiérrez, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival; and a three-part docuseries from PBS that featured contributions from her biographer and great-niece, among other art historians and curators.

Interest in the late Mexican painters’ work has steadily climbed in recent years. Next week, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) will unveil a new exhibition dedicated to artistic duo (the show, entitled Frida and Diego: The Last Dream, will run from March 21st through September 12th), which is organized in conjunction with The Metropolitan Opera’s El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego, an opera by American composer Gabriela Lena Frank devoted to the painterly couple. The opera features libretto by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz and will run May 14th to June 5th.

In 2019, a major exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum was dedicated to Kahlo and featured a display of her personal clothing and possessions. It built upon a similar show presented at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2018.

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Italy purchases rare Caravaggio painting for $34.7 million. https://ift.tt/sQ4Fa9m

Italy’s culture ministry has purchased a rare and long-hidden portrait by the Baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio for €30 million ($34.7 million). The transaction marks one of the country’s most significant investments in a single artwork and is among the highest recorded prices paid for a work by the artist.

Titled Portrait of Monsignor Maffeo Barberini (circa 1598), the painting will enter the permanent collection of the Palazzo Barberini in Rome, which is home to the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica. The landmark acquisition comes following more than a year of negotiations with the previous owners, a private collection in Florence.

Portrait of Monsignor Maffeo Barberini depicts the future pope Maffeo Barberini, adorned with a green cleric’s cloak and clutching papers with his other arm outstretched. Barberini was appointed Pope Urban VIII in 1623. The work was painted between 1598 and 1603, but it was only attributed to the great Italian painter in 1963 by the art historian Roberto Longhi. Since its attribution to Caravaggio, the painting has only been exhibited once, at the Palazzo Barberini in 2024, ahead of a three-month show dedicated to the artist. It has remained on view there since the show, and will now be displayed alongside the museum’s other works by Caravaggio, including Narcissus (1597–99), and Judith Beheading Holofernes (1598–99).

The acquisition by the Italian culture ministry is part of a larger move to ensure works by great Italian artists remain in the country and are accessible to the public. Last month, the Italian ministry purchased a double-sided work by Italian Renaissance painter Antonello da Messina for $14.9 million in a private sale at Sotheby’s in New York in an effort to block the work from appearing at auction.

“This acquisition, together with the recent acquisition of Antonello da Messina's Ecce Homo, is part of a broader project to strengthen the national cultural heritage that the Ministry of Culture will continue to pursue in the coming months, with the aim of making some art history masterpieces accessible to scholars and enthusiasts that would otherwise be destined for the private market,” said Alessandro Giuli, the Italian minister of culture, in a press statement.

The highest price ever associated with a work by Caravaggio is for Judith and Holofernes (1599), which was discovered in a French attic in 2014. In June 2019, just two days before it was set to go to auction with an estimate of $110 million to $170 million, it was acquired in a private sale.

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6 Outstanding Artworks at TEFAF Maastricht 2026 https://ift.tt/LZksavc

A to-scale dollhouse of Rembrandt’s house, a monumental 17th-century Mughal elephant sculpture, one of the oldest known maps of Europe—these could only be the offerings of TEFAF Maastricht. The fair kicked off its 38th edition at the MECC Center in the southern Dutch city with its VIP day on March 12.

TEFAF Maastricht, known for its vast historical scope—organizers claim it platforms works spanning “7,000 years of art history”—is the largest and most prestigious fair of its kind, with a steadfast reputation as the premier marketplace for museum-quality antiquities, 20th-century masterworks, Old Masters, and decorative arts.

The VIP day unfolded as a typically stylish and busy affair. Oyster shuckers and trays of wine sustained a mostly European crowd as they perused the aisles in an atmosphere that felt relaxed rather than rushed. Running until March 19, TEFAF is more marathon than sprint, and dealers appeared in little hurry to close transactions at the frenetic pace associated with many major blue-chip art fairs. Greetings were as likely to be la bise as a business handshake.

The VIP day unfolded as a typically stylish and busy affair. Oyster shuckers and trays of wine sustained a mostly European crowd as they perused the aisles in an atmosphere that felt relaxed rather than rushed. Running until March 19, TEFAF is more marathon than sprint, and dealers appeared in little hurry to close transactions at the frenetic pace associated with many major blue-chip art fairs. Greetings were as likely to be la bise as a business handshake.

With some 277 dealers from 24 countries present at TEFAF Maastricht 2026, only Art Basel’s flagship Basel fair—widely recognized as the world’s leading art fair—hosts more exhibitors. TEFAF’s clout, however, lies in its rigor: The fair is unparalleled for the vetting process each work on view must undergo, as well as the concentration of exceptional historical value and quality. The fair remains an essential destination for global institutions, private collectors, and the wider international art market.

Among the art historical rarities on view this year are a trio of works by the Gentileschis (two by Artemisia and one by her father Orazio), an early Diego Velázquez, a set of Francisco de Goya etchings once owned by the van Gogh family, and a Christ as Salvator Mundi from the workshop of Leonardo da Vinci.

Ladies Hats - Hennie, 1985
Erwin Olaf
Galerie Ron Mandos

Flower, 1983
Robert Mapplethorpe
Galerie Thomas Schulte

Still, the fair’s relentless focus on quality may position it well for the current market. Dealers arriving in Maastricht are navigating a more cautious art trade, in which selectivity at the top end has become the mood of the moment. In that environment, TEFAF’s emphasis on rarity, scholarship, and connoisseurship feels more relevant than ever.

Here, we select six outstanding artworks from TEFAF Maastricht 2026.

Berthe Morisot, Jeune fille au chien, 1892

Presented by M.S. Rau

Price: $4.45 million

Jeune fille au chien, 1892
Berthe Morisot
M.S. Rau

Rendered in loose, luminous brushstrokes, Berthe Morisot’s Jeune fille au chien (1892) is a highlight of New Orleans gallery M.S. Rau’s standout booth.

Morisot was a central figure of Impressionism, exhibiting in many of the movement’s landmark shows alongside Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Yet for much of the 20th century, her contributions were overshadowed by those of her male peers.

“Some artists create masterpieces. Others lead revolutions. Berthe Morisot did both,” said the gallery’s director, Bill Rau. “As a pioneering figure of Impressionism, she helped redefine modern painting through radical technique and vision—a remarkable achievement for a woman in the male-dominated 19th-century art world.”

In scenes drawn from the gardens, interiors, and social worlds she inhabited, Morisot transformed everyday moments into intimate studies. Jeune fille au chien was painted late in her career, shortly after her first retrospective and the death of her husband. “She threw herself into her art to help with grief, and this work has all the passion, sensitivity, and spontaneity that make Morisot such a compelling artist,” Rau added.

Helen Frankenthaler, Spring Run I, from Spring Run Series, 1996

Presented by Lyndsey Ingram

Price: $182,000

Lyndsey Ingram’s booth radiates color across the TEFAF aisles thanks to a striking selection of prints by Abstract Expressionist Helen Frankenthaler, which make up the bulk of its presentation.

Tucked around the corner, Spring Run I (1996)—the booth’s only monoprint—exemplifies the fluid, luminous abstraction that defined her painting career. Pools of soft blues, greens, and earthy tones bleed across the surface, forming washes of color that seem to float on the paper.

“The work exemplifies her painterly freedom on paper,” said gallery founder Lyndsey Ingram. “Frankenthaler was a prolific proofer, known for making many iterations before arriving at a final image. Spring Run I captures that process, turning the stages of printmaking into a unique work in its own right.”

Increasingly recognized as a pivotal figure in postwar American painting, Frankenthaler’s influence continues to resonate today—and this booth of outstanding works shows why.

Claude Monet, L’église de Vernon, temps gris and Église de Vernon, Soleil, both 1894

Presented by Alon Zakaim Fine Art

Price: £20 million ($26.83 million)

London dealer Alon Zakaim is known for his deep knowledge of Claude Monet, but he has outdone himself with a pairing of two paintings from the same series—so closely related they are numbered consecutively in the artist’s catalogue raisonné.

“For the first time in 130 years, these works have been brought back together,” said Zakaim, who is selling the works as a pair. “Painted at the height of his career in 1894, they belong to a small, focused series of just seven works.”

Monet painted the church at Vernon repeatedly in the early 1890s, captivated by how shifting light transformed its stone façade throughout the day. In this pair, the same Gothic structure appears under dramatically different conditions: One subdued and silvery beneath a gray sky, the other warmed by bright sunlight. Seen together, the works become a fascinating study in perception—a typically TEFAF treat and among the most talked-about pieces of the fair.

Zaha Hadid, Double Seat Bench “UltraStellar,” 2016

Presented by David Gill Gallery

Price: €86,000 ($116,000)

Double Seat Bench 'UltraStellar', 2016
Zaha Hadid
David Gill Gallery

TEFAF’s design section—where drastically different periods and styles often commingle within the same booth—sparks immense interior design inspiration, even for the most seasoned aesthetes. Zaha Hadid’s Double Seat Bench “UltraStellar” (2016) was one of the more modern masterworks drawing attention on the fair’s VIP day.

Transforming a familiar object into a sculptural form, the late, legendary architect designed this bench that flows outward in two opposing directions. It belongs to Hadid’s final collection for the design stalwart David Gill Gallery. “The whole collection was created in wood, which was very different from the first two collections, which were in aluminum and acrylic,” said Maria Garmaeva, a director at the gallery. “This work very much returns to nature and was designed shortly before her passing.”

Though best known for her buildings, Hadid frequently explored furniture and objects as extensions of her architectural practice. The bench’s futuristic yet organic form recalls the fluid lines that defined her buildings, like the London Aquatics Centre and the Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul.

Henry Moore, Figure, 1932

Presented by Osborne Samuel

Price: €950,000–€1 million ($1.09 million–$1.16 million)

Figure, 1932
Henry Moore
Osborne Samuel

Wood pieces are rare in the illustrious career of Henry Moore—so rare that Osborne Samuel, leading specialists in the sculptor, say it has only worked with a handful over the years. The pint-sized Figure (1932) rewards close inspection: Moore traces the grain of the beechwood, distilling the small figure into a series of swelling, simplified forms. The torso and limbs merge into smooth volumes, while the rich surface retains a tactile warmth.

“He’s taken something which looks, at first glance, relatively inanimate, and created something figurative from it,” said gallery co-founder, Peter Osborne.

One of the 20th-century’s most influential sculptors, Moore is also enjoying a notable posthumous moment. Last week, King and Queen (1952–53) set a new auction record for the artist, and the largest-ever outdoor exhibition of his work is set to open in London this summer. Figure, made early in his career, offers hints of the sensibilities that would define his later monumental works: rounded contours that suggest anatomy while also recalling pebbles, bones, or weathered landscapes.

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The global art market rebounded to $59.6 billion in 2025, Art Basel and UBS Report finds. https://ift.tt/NqxcHQK

The global art market returned to modest growth in 2025 after two consecutive years of decline, reaching an estimated $59.6 billion in sales, according to the latest Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report.

The 4% year-over-year increase in art sales globally is still below the 2022 peak of $67.8 billion. Growth in 2025 was also uneven across regions and price segments, reflecting broader economic volatility, rising costs, and ongoing geopolitical uncertainty.

“The market welcomed a shift in direction in 2025, from the contraction of previous years to modest growth,” Claire McAndrew, author of the report and founder of Arts Economics, said in a statement, while noting that geopolitical tensions and trade policy uncertainty continue to pose risks to the international art trade.

High-end auctions drive market recovery

Auction houses played a major role in the market’s recovery. Public auction sales rose 9% to $20.7 billion, fueled by high-value consignments. Works priced under $50,000—representing 95% of auction transactions—saw both value and volume decline by 2% in 2025, while pieces above $1 million accounted for less than 1% of lots but 54% of the market’s value. Sales for works priced above $10 million rose by 30% in value.

Some of the year’s biggest sales came from major private collections, in particular those featured in the November New York sales. Postwar art remained the largest auction category, accounting for 31% of sales value, followed by Modern art at 24%. However, the strongest growth came from Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, which surged 47% year over year.

The report also shows a long-term decline in the middle tiers of the market: Sales of works priced $50,000–$250,000 are down 29% since 2010.

Dealer sales return to growth but face rising costs

Dealer sales rose 2% overall to $34.8 billion after two years of decline. Some 42% of dealers reported sales increases in 2025, followed by 33% reporting declining sales, and 25% stating sales were stable.

Smaller dealers reported some of the strongest increases in sales, while the middle market remained comparatively sluggish.

At the same time, rising operating costs continued to squeeze profitability. Dealer costs—including shipping, art fairs, travel, and logistics—rose by an estimated 5% on average in 2025, outpacing overall sales growth. Indeed, 38% of dealers reported declining profitability.

The U.S. remains the world’s largest art market

The U.S. maintained its position as the largest art market, with sales reaching $26 billion, followed by the U.K. with $10.5 billion and China with $8.5 billion.

France posted one of the strongest results among major markets, with sales increasing 9% to $4.5 billion, while results across the rest of Europe were mixed.

The global art trade remains dominated by a handful of major markets. The United States, the United Kingdom, and China together accounted for 76% of global art sales in 2025.

from Artsy News https://ift.tt/civOKl7