Art Basel Paris 2025 unfolds this week at the Grand Palais Éphémère, bringing together over 200 galleries from 40 countries. The fair continues to strengthen Paris’s position as a leading global art hub, a meeting point where collectors, curators, and cultural figures intersect with the city’s fashion, design, and luxury worlds. The fair’s atmosphere feels vibrant, with strong presentations across modern and contemporary art, from blue-chip masterpieces to emerging voices shaping the next chapter of the market.
The energy in Paris this year is unmistakable. Museum shows, gallery dinners, and satellite exhibitions have turned the city into a living art circuit. Art Basel’s partnership with major institutions and its growing focus on cross-disciplinary collaboration underline how Paris is reclaiming its role as a cultural capital.
Avant-Première: Tuesday Is the New Wednesday
Tuesday has quietly become the real insiders’ day in Paris. The newly introduced Avant-Première gathered top collectors and curators ahead of the official First Choice and VIP Preview days — a soft opening of the fair with calm energy, full focus – and space to breathe. Compared to the usual intensity of the early First Choice Preview Days hours, the mood was relaxed, conversations longer, and gallerists visibly at ease.
Interesting side note: The style of the guests mirrored the atmosphere. Understated, confident, logo-free. Guests favored smart-casual looks, muted palettes, and effortless chic. It felt refreshingly authentic and was more about presence than performance.
By mid-week, most of the prime works had already found their buyers, setting a strong tone for the days ahead.
Hauser & Wirth
Just as at every art fair, the Hauser & Wirth booth stands out. Not through noise, but through substance. Gerhard Richter’s Abstract Painting (1978) – a quietly powerful work mirroring the artist’s current retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton (running through March 2026).
Alongside it, the gallery presents new pieces by Firelei Báez, Lorna Simpson, George Rouy, and Nairy Baghramian, each tied to major institutional shows this season. Additional highlights include works by Hélène Delprat, Camille Henrot, and Zeng Fanzhi, balanced by historical masterworks from Giorgio Morandi, Francis Picabia, Louise Bourgeois, Jack Whitten, and Sophie Taeuber-Arp. A seamless dialogue between past and present.
David Zwirner
Speaking of Richter: at David Zwirner’s booth, Gerhard Richter takes also center stage with two new large-scale edition works that coincide with the artist’s major retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton and his dedicated exhibition at David Zwirner Gallery Paris. Shown alongside pieces by Ruth Asawa, Marlene Dumas, On Kawara, Joan Mitchell, and Bridget Riley, Richter’s works anchor the presentation with their quiet precision and meditative depth.
Together, the galleries and concurrent exhibitions create a rare moment of artistic alignment in Paris. A dialogue between artist, gallery and institution that celebrates one of the most influential painters of the postwar era.
Lisson Gallery
At Lisson Gallery’s booth, a quiet current of humor and humanity runs through Ryan Gander’s The storyteller: The sense that you are a part of a flow of a thing (2025) — one of the fair’s most engaging works. An animatronic mouse, voiced by Gander’s daughter, periodically appears from a small wall opening to share fragments of reflection, memory, and make-believe. The piece bridges concept and emotion, intellect and intimacy, in a way that few works on view manage.
Within the gallery’s presentation — which spans Marina Abramović’s meditative The House with the Ocean View Model and Huguette Caland’s sensual abstraction Untitled (1978) — Gander’s mouse offers a moment of pause and connection. It captures the spirit of this year’s fair: playful, self-aware, and deeply human, reminding viewers that storytelling itself is an act of presence.
Public Program: Avenue Winston Churchill
Stretching between the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais, the public sector of Art Basel Paris 2025 transforms Avenue Winston Churchill into an open-air sculpture promenade. The exhibition, featuring Thomas Houseago, Leiko Ikemura, Wang Keping, Vojtěch Kovařík, Muller Van Severen, Stefan Rinck, and Arlene Shechet, is open daily from October 21 to 26, 11 am – 7 pm, with free access. Students from the École du Louvre are on-site every afternoon from 2 pm to 5:30 pm to guide visitors and share insights about the works on view.
Among the standout installations is Arlene Shechet’s Dawn (2024), presented by Pace Gallery in collaboration with Art Basel Paris. Installed at the heart of the avenue, directly between the Grand Palais and Petit Palais, the monumental aluminum sculpture unfurls like a flower in soft matte peach and glossy pink tones. Surrounding it are six large-scale pieces from Shechet’s acclaimed Girl Group installation at Storm King Art Center, forming a vivid dialogue with Paris’s historic architecture — between Pont Alexandre III, Hôtel des Invalides, and the Champs-Élysées.
Nearby, Stefan Rinck’s Camarillo in Disguise commands attention: a three-meter-tall limestone figure clutching a carrot, somewhere between myth and mischief. Hand-carved using traditional stone-masonry techniques, Rinck’s hybrid creatures bridge medieval iconography and pop imagination, offering a playful yet unsettling counterpoint to the classical grandeur of their surroundings.
The Art Basel and UBS Survey of Global Collecting 2025
At this year’s Art Basel Paris, blue-chip sales underscored the resilience of the global art market. Among the standout moments was a Gerhard Richter painting sold by Hauser & Wirth for USD 23 million, while galleries such as Gagosian, Thaddaeus Ropac, and David Zwirner reported brisk sales of works by contemporary masters and rising stars alike. The fair’s energy reflected renewed confidence, with collectors from Europe, Asia, and the U.S. converging in the French capital to secure top works across modern and post-war categories. But who are these buyers driving momentum at the top of the market?
Galleries may guard client lists closely, yet the 2025 Art Basel and UBS Survey of Global Collecting, released to coincide with the fair, sheds light on who is shaping today’s collecting landscape. The survey highlights the growing influence of female and next-generation collectors, who are allocating more of their wealth to art and redefining collecting priorities. On average, high-net-worth collectors devoted 20% of their wealth to art in 2025, up from 15% last year, with Gen Z and millennial buyers leading activity across digital, design, and fine art categories.
Women are also setting new benchmarks—spending 46% more than men on average and showing greater openness to emerging and female artists. “Women and younger collectors are playing an important role in shaping contemporary art collecting practices,” said Carola Wiese, Senior Art Advisor at UBS. As Art Basel CEO Noah Horowitz added, “Their tastes and behaviors are transforming the market, creating a more inclusive and interconnected art ecosystem.”
Qatar Airways and Dean Collection Launch Creatives 100
This week, Qatar Airways and Swizz Beatz unveiled The Creative 100 — a new global platform celebrating visionaries shaping culture across art, design, fashion, music, sport, and technology. The initiative marks a long-term partnership between the airline and The Dean Collection, founded by Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys, known for championing living artists and redefining the bond between creators and culture.
Each year, The Creative 100 will highlight one hundred innovators whose work transcends borders. The first names include Black Coffee, Miles Chamley-Watson, Yoon Ahn, and artists Kennedy Yanko and Patrick Eugene.
At this launch, F1-inspired aircraft renderings were revealed: the first creative expression of the collaboration and a bold metaphor for movement, innovation, and global connectivity. The special-edition livery, designed under Swizz Beatz’s creative direction, reimagines the plane as a traveling canvas, carrying creativity across continents and celebrating the shared language of art and travel.
Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive Officer, Engr. Badr Mohammed Al-Meer also announced a flagship Creative 100 Gala will follow in Doha in February 2026, alongside activations at Art Basel’s editions in Miami, Hong Kong, and Basel. Through The Dean Collection’s collaboration with Qatar Airways, Swizz Beatz continues his mission to empower artists and remind the world that creativity, like travel, connects us all.
Paris Saint-Germain x Art Basel
Last but not least, a project that warms the hearts of football fans and art lovers alike — where passion, creativity, and purpose meet. As part of its partnership with Art Basel Paris, Paris Saint-Germain invited visual artist Georges Rousse to reimagine the Parc des Princes through an artist’s eyes. Beneath the Boulogne stand, usually filled with chants, flags, and electric energy, Rousse created a red hexagon unfolding within a blue square — a play of light and perspective that captures the soul of the stadium and the devotion of its supporters.
The installation lives on through a limited series of photographs, celebrating not just form and movement, but emotion and community. In a gesture that gives the project even greater heart, 25% of proceeds will go to PSG for Communities, the club’s social-impact arm supporting education, inclusion, and solidarity programs for children and families in need. A reminder that art — like football — can move people, bring them together, and do good.
Art Basel Paris 2025 proves that creativity today knows no boundaries. It moves across disciplines, connects worlds, and reminds us that art, in all its forms, still has the power to bring people together and do good. What an incredible week!