Financial Times: Frieze fairs open in style with big-hit art sales
London’s Frieze fairs opened in characteristic style this week, with VIP visitors ranging from actress Florence Pugh to the UK’s former chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne (now chair of the British Museum). Exhibitors were pleased by the quality of institutional and collector attendees — and that the fairs’ organisers had managed the flow of visitors better than last year’s opening crush.
Reported early sales were mostly at the relatively low end of the art market scale (under £100,000) — though bigger hits included El Anatsui, who opened in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall this week and whose new work sold for $1.9mn (Goodman Gallery). Meanwhile Louise Bourgeois’s “Knife Couple” (1949, cast in 1990) sold for $3mn (Hauser & Wirth) and Georg Baselitz’s “Besuch in Dinard” (2023) for €1.2mn (Thaddaeus Ropac).
