Art Basel Paris week 2025: Where the legacy meets innovation.
Art Basel Paris 2025 concluded on October 26 as the fair’s successful second edition at the Grand Palais, establishing itself as a premier international contemporary art marketplace.
Leading galleries achieved significant sales throughout the fair. Pace Gallery reported the sale of Amedeo Modigliani’s Young Woman with Hair in Side Buns* (1918) for nearly USD 10 million. Gallery PPOW successfully sold out Kyle Dunn’s paintings, with combined sales totaling USD 700,000.
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Amedeo Modigliani, Young Woman with Hair in Side Buns , 1918
Kyle Dunn
Kyle Dunn, Salon, 2025
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Kyle Dunn, Salon, 2025, detail
Major galleries also presented compelling works across contemporary photography, with notable artists including Wolfgang Tillmans, Candida Höfer, and Thomas Demand featured prominently throughout the fair’s booths.
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Wolfgang Tillmans Aufsicht (Musee d'Orsay), 1986
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Thomas Demand, Daily #10, 2008
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Candida Hofer Semper Oper Dresden VIII, 2023
Winston Avenue, the pedestrian corridor between the Petit and Grand Palais, hosted seven monumental sculptures and installations from October 21-26, 2025. Featured artists included Thomas Houseago, Leiko Ikemura , Wang Keping , Vojtěch Kovařík, Stefan Rinck and Arlene Shechet, offering free public access to significant contemporary sculptural works.
Takashi Murakami’s eight-meter-tall octopus, commissioned by Louis Vuitton for Art Basel Paris 2025, emerged as the fair’s most enchanting centerpiece—a radiant monument to artistic collaboration suspended on the Balcon d’Honneur of the Grand Palais. The monumental creature, inspired by Chinese lanterns, commanded the space with its luminous, outstretched tentacles that seemed to ripple across the exhibition floor, drawing visitors into Murakami’s whimsical universe.
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Takashi Murakami’s Louis Vuitton Octopus
Myths the exhibition by Simon Porte Jacquemus.
Simon Porte Jacquemus stepped into his role as curator and scenographer for Myths, a groundbreaking collaboration between Galerie Chenel, Galerie Dina Vierny, and the designer that concluded at Collège des Bernardins on October 24, 2025. The show orchestrated a compelling dialogue between ancient sculptures, bronzes by Aristide Maillol, and Jacquemus’s distinctly structured garments.
The exhibition revealed a profound lineage of influence: ancient marbles from Olympia inspired Maillol’s sculptural language, which in turn nourished Jacquemus’s approach to drapery and silhouette.Each creator discovered in antiquity not mere nostalgia, but rather a disciplined structure—a timeless geometry of human proportion and presence that transcended medium.
Thema, Palais Brongniart
Thema, art fair dedicated to historical and contemporary design, craft, and artisanal excellence, concluded at Palais Brongniart as a refined counterpoint to the contemporary fervor of Art Basel.
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Thema, general view
The fair championed designers whose practices honor both heritage and innovation. Designer Elsa Foulon captivated collectors with her collection of hand-sculpted objects in striking crimson—vessels and forms that evoke blooming peonies captured mid-unfurl, each piece a meditation on organic geometry and tactile warmth. Her work demonstrated a profound understanding of material language and the poetry of handcraft.
Objective Gallery presented a striking bronze chair by Pierre Castignola, its surface polished to a luminous patina that caught and reflected light with sculptural precision. The piece exemplified Castignola’s design philosophy: furniture as monumental art object, where material, form, and function converge into a singular statement of elegant restraint. Thema’s curatorial vision—positioning design as a discourse between past and present—affirmed Paris’s enduring role as a hub for collectors and curators who understand that true luxury resides in the marriage of impeccable craftsmanship with intellectual rigor.
The Design Miami art fair
The Design Miami art fair 2025 will be hosted at Hôtel de Maisons, showcasing an array of remarkable artworks.
A standout piece is a stunning lamp by Christian Pellizari, priced at €70,000, which is presented alongside works by Gabriella Crespi.
Among the highlights is a modular seating concept designed by Pierre Paulin in 1966, known as ‘La Déclive.’ This innovative piece embodies one of Paulin’s most radical philosophies: the elimination of traditional furniture in favor of a dynamic, inhabitable floor. The exhibit serves as a living testament to Paulin’s vision for a design approach that redefines domestic arrangements, seamlessly blending architecture and furniture to create a transformative spatial experience.
Correspondent: Olga Korovina