With Art Basel in Basel in full swing, galleries have reported strong sales across all sectors of the show. From monumental masterpieces to the entire solo presentation of a rising star, here are some of this year’s most notable sales to private collections and institutions around the world.

Presented in the Unlimited sector, Torkwase Dyson’s Errantry (2024) is a giant black abstract geometric sculpture that invites viewers to walk through it. Having worked with painting, drawing, and sculpture, Dyson has recently become known for such monumental works, which incorporate geometric forms and reference the histories of enslavement and architectures of dispossession. Both Errantry and her similarly gargantuan sculpture Liquid Shadows, Solid Dreams (A Monastic Playground) (2024), exhibited in this year’s Whitney Biennial, address the ways space is used, imagined, and negotiated, especially by Black and Brown people. Errantry was sold by Pace and Gray to Brazil’s Instituto Inhotim for USD 380,000.

Another remarkable work sold by Pace is Emily Kam Kngwarray’s Yam Story (1995). An Aboriginal Australian artist, Kngwarray was known for translating ritual, ceremonial, and spiritual engagement with her homelands into batik textiles and paintings. The presentation of her work in Basel follows on the heels of a major retrospective at the National Gallery of Australia earlier this year, and anticipates the first large-scale presentation of her work in Europe at the Tate Modern in 2025. Yam Story, a painting on linen, was acquired by for USD 250,000.

The Italian artist Salvo was a prominent figure of Turin’s art scene, known for his associations with both Arte Povera and American Conceptualism. In Basel, work from various periods of his practice are presented by Sprüth Magers, Mazzoleni Art, and Gladstone Gallery. One noteworthy sale is Alba 2000 (2002), an oil on canvas painting of a nighttime winter street scene: falling snow covers the ground and trees, illuminated by the warm light of a lone streetlamp, while a factory emits a thick cloud of smoke in the distance. Sprüth Magers sold the painting for EUR 155,000 to a private collector in the European Union.

Notably, galleries presenting photography and younger artists have made significant strides. In the Feature sector, New Delhi’s Vadehra Art Gallery is presenting images by Indian-born, Canada-raised, and London-based photographer Sunil Gupta, who has spent more than four decades producing social and political bodies of work. The series on view, ‘Exiles’ (1986), comprises striking and vulnerable photographs of gay men in Delhi. Vadehra sold vintage C-type prints of the photographs for USD 20,000 each to private collections in London.

In both the Unlimited and Galleries sectors, Massimodecarlo is presenting work by the young Canadian artist Dominique Fung. With ancestry in Hong Kong and Shanghai, Fung’s practice explores the spaces in which collective traditions, memories, and legacies bleed together. In Unlimited, the gallery shows the artist’s most ambitious to work to date: A Tale of Ancestral Memories (2023), a massive 26-meter-long, seven-part, visual odyssey. In the Galleries sector, Fung’s paintings Translucent Hand Fan and Tang Dynasty Horses as Offering (both 2024) sold for USD 110,000 and USD 170,000, respectively.

For their second participation in Art Basel in Basel, the London gallery Union Pacific sold Libyan artist Nour Jaouda’s entire Statements presentation. Titled The shadow of every tree (2024), the installation – comprising dyed fabric, a steel gate, and concrete – nods to her immediate material surroundings in Cairo, where she now lives, as well as wider discussions about migration, ancient Egyptian history, and colonial intervention. The installation was sold to a private collection in Europe for GBP 105,000. With work also included in this year’s Venice Biennale exhibition, ‘Foreigners Everywhere’, this sale cements Jaouda’s status as one to watch.

Also on view in both Venice and Basel is work by Wael Shawky. Shawky is known for his investigation of historic narratives through the blending of fact and fiction, reflected in his video for the Egyptian Pavilion in Venice and the oil paintings included in Lisson Gallery’s presentation in the Galleries sector. His series ‘Isles of the Blessed’ explores how myths often become belief; this week, Lisson sold Isles of the Blessed XI (2022) for USD 35,000.

Finally, it is significant to note that the most expensive works at the fair have been acquired, indicating that the upper echelons of the market remain firmly intact. David Zwirner sold Joan Mitchell’s sensuous diptych Sunflowers (1990–91) for USD 20 million – close to the artist’s auction record of USD 29 million. Arshile Gorky’s Untitled (Gray Drawing (Pastoral)) (c.1946–47), a charcoal and pastel work on paper, was sold for USD 16 million by Hauser & Wirth. And in a sale by Gladstone Gallery, Jannis Kounellis’s Untitled (Wooden Rose) (1966) – a piece that is stunning in its simplicity, featuring a single rose depicted in wooden feather on white canvas – went for USD 2.5 million.