Market dispatch·Paris
€2.8M Gauguin leads Artcurial's double bill of Art Basel Paris-week auctions
Artcurial will stage two sales in Paris on 24 October timed to Art Basel Paris week: its 20/21 sale led by a €2.2–2.8m Gauguin and works by Basquiat, Bonnard and Zao Wou-Ki, alongside the Louis Grandchamp de Raux modernist collection sale.

Artcurial has scheduled two back-to-back auctions for Saturday 24 October, deliberately timed to coincide with Art Basel Paris week. The 20/21 sale will take place at 2pm, followed at 4pm by the sale of the Louis Grandchamp de Raux collection, presented as La Modernité en partage.
The headline lot is Paul Gauguin's 1889 Breton et Bretonne au Pouldu, painted during the artist's decisive move from Impressionism toward symbolism in the Breton fishing village of Le Pouldu. Estimated at €2.2–2.8 million, it carries the highest estimate of the weekend and exemplifies the symbolic turn that defined Gauguin's mature work.
The 20/21 sale also offers Jean-Michel Basquiat's raw 1981 Untitled, estimated at €600,000–€800,000, showcasing the crayon linework and symbolic elements of the artist's early career. Pierre Bonnard's La petite Fenêtre (1946), a view from the artist's bedroom window in Cannes painted not long before his death, is estimated at €550,000–€750,000. Zao Wou-Ki's Cargo au port (1952) carries the same €600,000–€800,000 range; the harbor scene dates from a transitional period when the artist was moving toward gestural abstraction while weaving together Western oil painting traditions and Chinese calligraphic sensibility.
The double sale builds on Artcurial's earlier preview of the Grandchamp de Raux holdings, a two-decade French modernist collection. By concentrating museum-quality modern material into a single Saturday afternoon, the house is pitching its flagship Art Basel Paris-week moment directly to the international collectors, curators and dealers already in the city for the fair.


