Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.
It’s fun to celebrity watch the entrance to Frieze London in Regent’s Park before the fair begins. As the floodgates opened for the VIP preview on Wednesday, Oscar-nominated actor Andrew Garfield and his girlfriend, actress Monica Barbaro, strolled in. Also present were Tilda Swinton, Bianca Jagger, London-based designer Dilara Findikoglu, and Raf Simons, Prada’s Belgium-based co-creative director and a longtime art collector. “I like everything about London,” Simons told ARTnews, “especially its people.”
The night before, amid the horde at the opening of Thaddaeus Ropac’s Georg Baselitz show, actor Damian Lewis was sizing up the big canvases. A couple of blocks down, you could find Serpentine Galleries artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist casting his discerning eye at a Turner-inspired Rirkrit Tiravanija seascape at Pilar Corrias gallery. The starry showing for London’s offerings this week suggested that the city’s art scene still has life in it, even if some skipped it entirely for Paris, where Art Basel opens next week.
It’s not worth rehashing the well-worn—and, at this point, tedious—London-versus-Paris debate. But most people weren’t talking about it, either, on Wednesday at Frieze. Here’s some of what sold by the end of the fair’s first day. (While some of the mega-galleries post big ticket sales, it’s hard to gauge the overall health of the art market at art fairs because overall sales data is not made public. Plus, galleries self-report their sales, which makes them tough to verify.)
The mega-galleries have been relegated to the back of the fair’s tent, to give smaller players the spotlight near the fair’s entrance. Yet the placement did not deter Hauser & Wirth from selling most of its work by noon. Zoe Sperling, a partner at the gallery, told ARTnews she’d seen “a lot of American and Asian collectors.”
More than 20 pieces sold at Hauser & Wirth’s booths at Frieze London and Frieze Masters, totaling a sum of more than $11 million. Among the works sold were two Francis Picabia paintings, one untitled work from the 1940s sold for €1.1 million and Transparence, visage de femme (1928–29) for six-figures.
“There’s been tremendous energy here this morning,” Sperling said. “One of the things we’re really seeing is the interest from historic collectors that were maybe once more interested in traditional works and are now looking at contemporary works to complement their collections.” Avery Singer’s Solver (v.3), 2026, sold for $800,000, George Condo’s Figure Composition(2026) for $600,000, Lee Bul’s Perdu—Silhouette VII (2026) for $290,000, and Christina Kimeze’s Game on (crane’s cut), 2026, for $195,000.
The gallery also did well at Frieze Masters, where the offerings skew historical. Jan Brueghel the Elder’s Still Life of Flowers in a Stoneware Vase (1607–8) sold for around £5 million (about $6.58 million). “It’s one of the most important works we’ve ever been involved with,” Iwan Wirth, the gallery’s president and cofounder, told ARTnews. “The painting, made in the 17th century, stands as an exemplar of the kind of genius that contemporary artists look to in their own practice.”
At Lehmann Maupin’s Frieze London booth, more than 10 works sold, including McArthur Binion’s dna:sketch (2024) for $150,000. Other notable works included Liza Lou’s Azure (2015) for $140,000 and Alex Prager’s Ceremony (2026) for $60,000. The gallery also said it sold several works by UK-based artists to private collections, varying from three new paintings by Billy Childish in the range of £50,000–£60,000 ($65,900 to $79,100), to two new paintings by Freya Douglas-Morris in the range of £30,000–£50,000 ($39,000–$65,900), to two new works by Rana Begum in the range of £25,000 to £40,000 ($33,000–$52,600).
The British capital has a contagious energy, according to those who made a sale on the first day. “London is buzzing. It is helped by its proximity to Art Basel Paris, as many international collectors and museums are coming first to London and then go on to Paris. Two very different birds with one stone,” Sadie Coles, who runs her eponymous London gallery, told ARTnews. “There is depth here, and so much on offer for visitors from outstanding younger galleries to major exhibitions in museums.”
Perrotin’s solo booth of Izumi Kato’s paintings and sculptures sold for up to $250,000 each. The gallery had other notable sales from Oli Epp, whose new paintings sold for $55,000 each, and Shim Moon-Seup, who had a painting that fetched above $63,000. There was also a sculpture by Alma Allen, the artist controversially representing the United States at the Venice Biennale who will soon have a Perrotin show in Paris. It sold for $60,000.
David Zwirner moved 13 works that accounted for $4.55 million in sales. The top five pieces were paintings from Michaël Borremans for $1.5 million, a Dana Schutz for $900,000, a Lisa Yuskavage for $450,000, a Portia Zvavahera for $300,000, and a a Sasha Gordon for $400,000, the latter of which went to a European museum that the gallery did not identify. “Frieze London is still bringing people in, and it’s not just local collectors. It has been a good international morning,” James Green, associate partner and head of David Zwirner’s London gallery told ARTnews.
Rather than solely hanging its art on the wall, White Cube experimented with a metal frame for its booth featuring sketches by Ilana Savdie. The gallery recorded $1.55 million in sales, with Savdie’s painting The Great Compromise (2026) selling for $175,000 and Conspiracy of the Barons(2026) for $165,000. “The history of a place like this [London] is really hard to ignore,” Savdie told ARTnews. “I look to a lot of the artists that have been based here and the movements that have taken place, there are incredible museums to be inspired by. I haven’t spent enough time here to really be able to speak to it, but from afar I’m a big admirer.”
Edel Assanti’s sales included the placement of two paintings by Thornton Dial, with prices ranging $160,000 to $230,000.
Collectors at the fair came from near and far. Selim Bouafsoun, the Tunisian collector based in Dubai, told ARTnews he bought Tamo Jugeli’s Swan in Lake (2026) from Bukia Vakhania for $40,000 and Jonathan Okoronkwo’s Wilderness Be the Anthem Rydee (2026) from London’s Emalin gallery for €20,000. He also snapped up Jacob Littlejohn’s Over the Rills, the Crags, and the Hills (2025) from Karma gallery for $8,000.
Alain Servais, a Belgian collector, said he bought Ella Fleck’s Training Material (2026, one of three editions) from LA’s Ehrlich Steinberg gallery for £14,000 ($18,500).
By 3 p.m., Pace Gallery had sold most of its paintings by Brazilian artist Marina Perez Simão, valued at prices up to $250,000. Pace chief executive Marc Glimcher told ARTnewsstressed the wide age range of collectors. “We had a lot of older collectors buy works today, someone in their 70s and a very young collector in their 20s,” he said.
Next door, Thaddaeus Ropac also nearly sold out, with work by Italian sculptor Leoncillo Leonardi (1915–68) drawing international buyers. Long revered by Italian connoisseurs but little known elsewhere, Leoncillo is enjoying something of a revival. Ropac announced representation in June, alongside the launch of a new foundation. The gallery’s top prices included Martha Jungwirth’s 202 painting Untitled (Berggasse 19) at €560,000, Antony Gormley’s Aside (2025) at £500,000, and Adrian Ghenie’s Untitled (2026) at €380,000.
Xavier Hufkens reported selling more than 16 pieces, including a work on paper by Richard Serra for $750,000, a suite of Louise Bourgeois works on paper for $400,000, and two neon works by Tracey Emin for prices between £95,000 and £105,000.
Several young galleries in the Focus section also did well. The Amsterdam-based Diez Gallery sold Jessica Wilson’s video installation Sweet Nothing(2025–26) for more than €20,000 to the Centraal Museum in Utrecht. “Last Frieze London for me was a very bad one, and since then, the gallery has been doing its best year in terms of finances and new collections,” dealer Diego Diez told ARTnews.
Dealer Gabriella Price from Heidi gallery told ARTnews that her business relocated from Berlin to London this year to “pursue fresh opportunities.” “London feels like a really fantastic city at this time, and the Focus section of Frieze gets so much attention with all the prize giving and funds that take place,” she said.
Dealer Adam D. Miller, of the Los Angeles–based gallery The Pit, returned to Frieze with renewed energy. He sold two thirds of the paintings from his solo booth for Bella Foster. “We want to develop more, particularly with European and UK institutions,” he told ARTnews.
Over at Frieze Masters, Andrew Edlin had a booth featuring the works of Frank Walter and Beverly Buchanan, whose work is in the Venice Biennale. The gallery said that a major museum board president—one that it did not name—purchased a 1990s work by Buchanan for a price between $65,000 and $125,000.
Robilant sold a mirror work by Michelangelo Pistoletto for €45,000 ($59,300) and two ceramics by Lucio Fontana, Bullfight for €125,000 ($164,900) and Concetto Spaziale for €250,000 ($329,700). “We have all seen the renewed interest in Old Masters as the pendulum swings from speculative to secure, and as clients look to artists who have already shown they can hold their value,” gallery director Michele di Robilant told ARTnews. He expressed optimism for the top of the market: “Clients are certainly finding their feet again at the top end. There is light at the end of the tunnel.”