Art Basel Opens Amid Market Fears: What Sold on VIP Day
Jo Stella-Sawicka, senior director of Goodman Gallery, said that “there are a lot of doom-and-gloom views on the market right now,” but that works priced in line with their quality would sell. The gallery, which was founded in Johannesburg, sold several works by Atta Kwami (currently the subject of a solo show at its London outpost) at prices ranging from $40,000 to $200,000. Although the Ghanaian painter, who died in 2021, does not have a well-developed secondary market, those numbers are leaps and bounds above the $28,000 record set for his work Atonsu Agogo (1995) at Christie’s last October.
Goodman also has a 1985–87 diptych story quilt by Faith Ringgold, South African Love Story #2 (Part I and II), priced at $2.4 million, well over the $1.25 million record set for her last month at Sotheby’s New York. It is one of three works the gallery has by the American artist, who died in April at 93.
