By Noele Illien
ZURICH (Reuters) – Collectors flocked to the Swiss city of Basel this week for the world’s biggest art fair, looking to snap up the top-ticket works, including a $60 million painting by Mark Rothko.
Noah Horowitz, who became Chief Executive of Art Basel in November said that an extraordinary amount of people from Asia have travelled to this year’s flagship Art Basel fair.
“There’s a really notable increase in exceptionally strong collectors from the Asian region which is really cool,” he said.
Joost Bosland, co-owner of Stevenson, a gallery with locations in South Africa and the Netherlands, said he too has noticed the surge.
“We’ve seen more people specifically from mainland China, but also from that broader region in our booth than we certainly have seen at any fair before this one,” he said.
China’s art market, the third largest in the world, had reported a steep decline in sales in 2022, with lockdowns stalling activity and cancelling art auctions and events, according to the 2023 UBS Global Art Market Report.
Despite sales in China declining 14% year-on-year to $11.2 billion by the end 2022, the report said there had been a growing sense of optimism among the region’s dealers.
“That group of patrons has brought a real energy to the fair,” Bosland said.
Also noticeable to the gallerist this year in Basel has been the growing number of young buyers.
“I don’t think I’ve ever sold as much art to people my own age,” the 39-year-old said.
Bosland said this group of collectors is more aware of the potential that art has on the secondary market, but he cautions against seeing art as an investment or asset class because of the lack of guarantees.
Patricia Amberg, head of the complementary art advisory service UBS offers its ultra-high net worth clients, too says the Swiss bank doesn’t consider art to be an investment or an asset class in the usual sense.
“The art market compared to the financial market is completely different – it is very opaque, it is not transparent and there are limited sources of data,” she said.
Art Basel is open to the public until Sunday.
(Reporting by Noele Illien; Editing by Sandra Maler)
