Art Basel Miami Beach 2025 kicked off its first preview day on Wednesday, December 3rd, with a flurry of high-value transactions that signaled strong market confidence. The marquee event of Miami Art Week and the final major art fair of the year saw several seven-figure deals on opening day, led by David Zwirner's sale of an abstract Gerhard Richter painting for $5.5 million.
The robust opening day sales appear to reflect a wave of positive market sentiment that has been building following last month's strong performance at New York auctions. Those November sales generated a total of $2.2 billion, helping to ease lingering concerns about weakness in the market's top tier that had persisted earlier this year.
Gerhard Richter has experienced a particular surge in interest this fall, coinciding with his comprehensive retrospective currently on view at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. This follows a pattern established at Art Basel Paris in October, where a $23 million Richter work offered by Hauser & Wirth led the opening sales at that fair.
While Hauser & Wirth didn't secure the top sale this time around, the gallery still reported impressive results, including one $4 million transaction on opening day. Marc Payot, president of the gallery, emphasized the strength of their performance in a press statement, noting that "in the first three hours of the fair, our sales have already totaled 40% more than we made in the entire week at last year's Art Basel Miami Beach."
David Zwirner's strong performance extended well beyond the headline Richter sale. The gallery reported selling a 1967 Alice Neel painting for $3.3 million, two Josef Albers paintings for $2.5 million and $2.2 million respectively, and a 1969 Ruth Asawa wire sculpture for $1.2 million. The gallery also successfully placed a new work by Dana Schutz with an American museum for $1.2 million.
Hauser & Wirth's notable sales included George Condo's "Untitled (Taxi Painting)" from 2011, which sold for approximately $4 million. The gallery also moved two significant Louise Bourgeois works: "Persistent Antagonism" (1946-48) for $3.2 million and "Mr. Follett: Nursery-Man" (1944) for $2.5 million. Additionally, they reported seven-figure sales for works by Ed Clark, Henry Taylor, and Rashid Johnson.
White Cube's opening day was highlighted by a Willem de Kooning work that sold for $2.85 million. The gallery also reported strong sales across its roster, including a Damien Hirst work for $2.5 million, a Tracey Emin piece for £1.2 million ($1.6 million), Andreas Gursky's "Harry Styles" (2025) for €1.2 million ($1.4 million), and a Richard Hunt work for $1 million.
Several other galleries reported significant transactions during the opening hours. Almine Rech sold a Pablo Picasso painting in the range of $2.8 million to $3 million, along with a James Turrell work priced between $900,000 and $1 million. Thaddaeus Ropac moved two Alex Katz works - "Orange Hat 2" (1973) for $2.5 million and "Wildflowers 1" (2010) for $1.5 million - while also selling Georg Baselitz's "Selbstportrait 1953, 18.V.97" (1997) for €1 million ($1.2 million).
Additional notable sales included Gladstone Gallery's transaction of Robert Rauschenberg's "Tarnished Honor (Copperhead)" (1989) for $1.5 million, and Pace's sale of Sam Gilliam's "Heroines, Beyoncé, Serena and Althea" (2020) for $1.1 million. David Kordansky Gallery sold Rashid Johnson's "God Painting 'I Dream A Lot'" (2025) for $750,000, while Lisson Gallery moved an untitled 2015 Anish Kapoor work for £500,000 ($666,645). Lehmann Maupin concluded strong opening day sales with two paintings from McArthur Binion's DNA:Study series, totaling $500,000.
The strong opening day performance at Art Basel Miami Beach 2025 suggests that confidence has returned to the high-end art market, with collectors and institutions actively acquiring significant works across multiple price points and artistic movements.
