Megamurals, Guerrilla Girls and something rotten in the Oval Office – the week in art

The Guardian's weekly art roundup highlights several exhibitions, including Wilhelm Sasnal's politically charged paintings at Sadie Coles HQ in London, a Joan Eardley retrospective in Edinburgh, and a Guerrilla Girls show in East Sussex. It also reports on Art UK's digitization of over 6,700 UK murals, the theft of Impressionist paintings from an Italian museum, and the discovery of a stolen ancient gold helmet.

Dealers at TEFAF Maastricht Report Robust Sales, Offering Works Ranging from Two Inches to Room-Size

Dealers at TEFAF Maastricht Report Robust Sales, Offering Works Ranging from Two Inches to Room-Size

Dealers at the TEFAF Maastricht art fair reported strong sales, defying concerns over global unrest and geopolitical tensions that limited some collectors' travel. The fair, featuring 277 dealers from 24 countries, saw a high caliber of international collectors engaging with works ranging from monumental 18th-century sculptures to minuscule, intricately detailed pieces. First-time exhibitors and veterans alike expressed satisfaction, with one rare books dealer calling it his best year in three decades of participation.

Wet Paint Does Frieze Week: The Dinosaur Dealer Downtown, David Zwirner Tribeca, and More Juicy Art-World Gossip

Artnet News' gossip column 'Wet Paint' covers the opening week of Frieze New York, beginning with the group show 'Statics of an Egg' at David Zwirner's newly renamed Tribeca gallery (formerly 52 Walker). Curated by Martin Germann, the exhibition features Japanese artists gathered by Yu Nishimura and Kenji Ide, with Nishimura's painting 'in waiting' highlighted. The column also reports on a private party at the River art-world hangout and a visit to Amanita gallery for 'A Land Before Time: Three Dinosaurs and a Gondola,' which includes a John Chamberlain sculpture. Notable attendees include artists Sasha Gordon, Olivia van Kuiken, Calvin Marcus, and Josh Smith, as well as dealers Marlene Zwirner and Matthew Brown.

The Most Expensive Jean-Michel Basquiat Works Ever Sold at Auction

ARTnews published a listicle ranking the most expensive Jean-Michel Basquiat works ever sold at auction, updated as of May 15, 2026. The article traces Basquiat's rise from street artist under the moniker SAMO to a major figure in the downtown New York scene, highlighting key relationships with Keith Haring, Diego Cortez, and curator Henry Geldzahler. It notes that Basquiat's entire mature output was created between 1981 and 1984, and that his 1983 painting *Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown)* sold at Sotheby's in May 2026 for $52.7 million, placing it among his top sales. The piece also details earlier top sales, including *Untitled* (1982) for $29.3 million at Christie's in 2013 and *Flesh and Spirit* (1982–83) for $30.7 million at Sotheby's in 2018.

A tale of two Annas: Van Gogh’s favourite Whistler painting stars in Tate Britain show

Tate Britain will open a major exhibition titled *James McNeill Whistler* on 21 May, running through 27 September, before traveling to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam (16 October–10 January 2027) under the subtitle *Dandy and Disrupter*. The show’s centerpiece is Whistler’s iconic *Arrangement in Grey and Black no. 1* (commonly known as *Portrait of the Painter's Mother*), on loan from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and displayed in its original frame designed by the artist. The article explores Vincent van Gogh’s admiration for the painting—he wrote to his sister Wil in 1889 that it reminded him of their own mother—and traces the work’s connections to the Goupil gallery (later Boussod & Valadon), where both Vincent and his brother Theo worked.

The Most Expensive Works by Mark Rothko Sold at Auction

Mark Rothko's paintings continue to command top prices at auction, with a list of his most expensive works updated in May 2026. The article details sales including 'Orange, Red, Yellow' (1956), 'Untitled' (1952) for $66.2 million, 'White center (Yellow, pink and lavender on rose)' (1950) for $72.8 million, 'No. 1 (Royal Red and Blue)' (1954) for $75 million, and 'No. 10' (1958) for $81.9 million. It also notes that in May 2026, Rothko's 'Brown and Blacks in Reds' (1957) sold for $85.8 million at Sotheby's from dealer Robert Mnuchin's collection, narrowly missing the artist's record.

At Frieze New York, Business Plunks Along, Leonardo DiCaprio Alights

At the VIP opening of Frieze New York, collectors were present but subdued, with galleries presenting modest displays and sales proceeding at a sensible, sedate pace. Despite the lack of urgency, business has improved since last year, buoyed by upcoming top-tier auctions. Thaddaeus Ropac confirmed four early sales, including a George Baselitz canvas for €1.4 million and an Alex Katz work for $400,000. David Zwirner’s booth of Joe Bradley paintings was among the buzziest, with all works on hold by early afternoon, while Cindy Sherman photographs at Hauser & Wirth sold steadily. Leonardo DiCaprio made visits, and Kelly Sinnapah Mary’s paintings at James Cohan Gallery sold out, the largest to a museum.

Cai Guo-Qiang joins White Cube

White Cube now represents Cai Guo-Qiang, making the British gallery the first to represent the Chinese-born, New York-based artist known for his gunpowder paintings. The announcement coincides with White Cube’s solo presentation of Cai’s ongoing gunpowder painting series featuring birds at Tefaf New York (14-19 May). Cai had a solo show at White Cube’s Bermondsey space last autumn, titled *Gunpowder and Abstraction 2015-2016*, his first London presentation since his large-scale project at Tate Modern in 2003.

Who Went to Venice Last Week? Jenny Saville, Glenn Lowry, Jewel, and Many Other Power Players

Artnet News reporter Katya Kazakina recounts her experience at the opening week of the 61st Venice Biennale, describing a whirlwind of art, parties, and chance encounters. Notable figures spotted include former MoMA director Glenn Lowry, singer-songwriter Jewel (who debuted her visual art show "Matriclysm: An Archaeology of Connections Lost"), and Japanese Nintendo heir and collector Banjo Yamauchi. High-profile events included Thaddaeus Ropac gallery's reception for Georg Baselitz's final paintings (priced up to $1.5 million) and François Pinault's annual party at Fondazione Giorgio Cini, attended by Selma Hayek, Lorna Simpson, and JR. The article also highlights the social dynamics of the biennale, where dealers, curators, and collectors network across historic palazzos and hotels.

Melding Chinese lacquer with European abstraction

A collateral exhibition titled "Alchemical Universe" at the Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel in Venice features 35 lacquer paintings by Chinese-German artist Su Xiaobai. Curated by Stephen Little of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma) and designed by architect Kulapat Yantrasast, the show spans Su's early experiments to recent works created for Venice, including suspended temple tiles and floor pieces on mirrored Murano glass. Su, who was advised by Gerhard Richter in 2003 to focus on lacquer, now works exclusively in the medium, layering and scoring tree sap to create contemplative abstract works.

Why Contemporary Artists Are Raiding the Renaissance Toolkit

Three contemporary artists—Alison Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Bühler-Rose, and Nick Doyle—are reviving the Renaissance woodworking techniques of intarsia and marquetry in their current exhibitions. Taylor is showing marquetry hybrid paintings at Jessica Silverman Gallery in San Francisco, Bühler-Rose is presenting a solo booth with Stems Gallery at Independent, and Doyle is also participating in the trend. Their work draws inspiration from the Gubbio Studiolo at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a 15th-century trompe-l'œil room that exemplifies the decorative inlay tradition.

Frank Stella’s Personal Collection of Navajo Textiles Goes on View for the First Time

A selection of Navajo textiles from the personal collection of minimalist artist Frank Stella is being exhibited and sold for the first time. The 55 textiles, dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, will be on view at Arader Galleries in New York from May 15 to June 10, then travel to Peter Pap Rugs in New Hampshire in June. Priced between $6,500 and $25,000, the collection includes a large 19th-century blanket that Stella lent to a seminal 1972 exhibition at LACMA. Stella began collecting these works in the mid-1960s after being introduced to Navajo art by Donald Judd and Tony Berlant.

One of Van Gogh’s greatest watercolours could achieve a record price

Sotheby's New York will auction Vincent van Gogh's watercolor *The Harvest in Provence* (June 1888) on May 19, with an estimate of $25–35 million. The work, larger and more elaborate than a related watercolor at Harvard, was created just days before van Gogh's celebrated oil painting of the same scene. It is signed and titled, suggesting the artist considered it a finished piece rather than a mere study, and he sent it to his brother Theo before completing the oil version.

Lee Ufan: ‘I try to bring together those things which are made and unmade’

Lee Ufan, the South Korean artist and founding member of the Mono-ha movement, is being honored with a major solo exhibition at SMAC San Marco Art Centre as an official Collateral Event of the Venice Biennale, marking his 90th year. Simultaneously, a new display of his painting and sculpture opens at Dia Beacon in New York State, and his first show in Portugal opens at Casa e Parque de Serralves in July. In an interview with The Art Newspaper, Ufan discusses his artistic journey, his rejection of the artist's hand, and the influence of seeing a Barnett Newman exhibition at MoMA in 1971, which led him to develop his signature From Point and From Line paintings that use repeated marks to express the passage of time.

Remembering Pat Steir, one of the 20th century’s late-blooming great artists

Pat Steir, the acclaimed American painter known for her Waterfall series, died in Manhattan on 25 March at age 87. The article traces her career from early struggles as a freelance illustrator and art director, through her transformative encounter with Sol LeWitt in the early 1970s, to her eventual emergence as a major figure in contemporary painting. It highlights her teaching at CalArts and Parsons, her involvement with feminist and artist-run institutions like Heresies and Printed Matter, and the pivotal moment in the early 1980s when she cut up a reproduction of a Jan Brueghel the Elder flower painting into 64 panels, repainting each in a different historical style.

A $15M De Kooning Leads Lévy Gorvy Dayan’s New Auction-Style Sales Experiment

Lévy Gorvy Dayan is launching LGD Hammer, a new live-bidding platform that blends private sales with auction dynamics. The inaugural sale on May 16 will feature a 1984 Willem de Kooning painting estimated at $10–15 million, led by co-founder Brett Gorvy, a former auction veteran. The article also reports on gallery closures (Stephen Friedman Gallery, Galerie Philipp Zollinger, Astor Gallery), artist moves (Zoe Leonard to Maxwell Graham, Kehinde Wiley among creditors), and Sotheby’s upcoming single-owner sale of Joe Lewis’s collection expected to exceed $200 million.

Rare early photographs reveal lost sites featured in Van Gogh’s paintings

Two rare photographic albums taken by art critic Gustave Coquiot in 1922 have been acquired by the newly established Van Gogh Academy in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, and are now on display. The images capture many of the sites in Arles that Vincent van Gogh painted in the late 1880s, including the Yellow House, the Langlois Bridge, and the Rhône riverbank. Several of these locations were later destroyed during World War II or by modernization, making Coquiot's photographs valuable historical records of Van Gogh's original subjects.

Zoe Leonard Departs Hauser & Wirth for New York’s Maxwell Graham Gallery

Zoe Leonard, a celebrated conceptual artist whose work will appear at the Venice Biennale next week, has left Hauser & Wirth—a global gallery with 14 locations—to join Maxwell Graham, a smaller New York-based gallery known for spare conceptual presentations. Leonard will continue to be represented by her longtime galleries, Cologne’s Galeria Gisela Capitain and Milan’s Raffaella Cortese. Maxwell Graham staged its first Leonard exhibition last year with “Display,” featuring photographs of historical objects in museums. Leonard is the second artist to depart Hauser & Wirth in the past year, following George Condo’s exit in November.

East Africa meets Western Europe as Michael Armitage takes on Venice's Palazzo Grassi

The artist Michael Armitage opens a monographic exhibition titled 'The Promise of Change' at Venice's Palazzo Grassi, featuring 46 large paintings and nearly 100 sketches that survey his past decade of work. At 42, Armitage is the youngest artist to receive a solo show at the palazzo, which is owned by François Pinault and has previously hosted Albert Oehlen, Luc Tuymans, and Marlene Dumas. The exhibition highlights Armitage's fusion of East African and Western European artistic influences, drawing on his upbringing in Kenya and his training at London's Byam Shaw School of Art, the Slade, and the Royal Academy.

Gagosian Opens a New Ground-Floor Flagship at 980 Madison Avenue with Duchamp-Rauschenberg Double Header

Gagosian is opening a new ground-floor flagship gallery at 980 Madison Avenue in New York, moving from its former upper-floor space in the same building. Designed by Caplan Colaku Architects, the 12,000-square-foot, two-level space consolidates three storefronts into a continuous layout with restrained materials like Portland Taupe stone and brushed stainless steel. The inaugural exhibition pairs a major Marcel Duchamp show with six early works by Robert Rauschenberg on loan from the Cy Twombly Foundation, coinciding with a Duchamp retrospective at MoMA and referencing a 1965 Duchamp exhibition held in the same building.

The village where Van Gogh spent his final days celebrates its most distinguished visitor

An exhibition titled "Van Gogh, Influencer: Legacies in Motion" has opened at the Château of Auvers-sur-Oise, the village near Paris where Vincent van Gogh spent his final 70 days and died by suicide in July 1890. The show, running until 3 January 2027, features nearly a hundred works by artists influenced by Van Gogh, including Léonide Bourges, Charles-François Daubigny, and Léo Gausson, though no original Van Gogh paintings are included. Curated by Wouter van der Veen, the exhibition explores visual parallels and stylistic contrasts between Van Gogh’s iconic works—such as *Church at Auvers* and *Wheatfield with Crows*—and those of his contemporaries and followers.

Defiant women and daring paintings: Emin, Webster and Wylie create a buzz in the UK's exhibition calendar

The UK art scene is currently dominated by major survey exhibitions from three prominent female artists: Rose Wylie, Tracey Emin, and Sue Webster. Rose Wylie, at 92, makes history as the first woman painter to occupy the Royal Academy’s main galleries, while Tracey Emin presents a raw, thematic survey at Tate Modern reflecting on her life before and after cancer. Simultaneously, Sue Webster marks her institutional solo debut at Firstsite, showcasing a transition from her famous collaborative practice to deeply personal oil painting.

Process Is the Point at IFPDA Print Fair

The International Fine Prints and Drawings Association (IFPDA) Print Fair returned to New York’s Park Avenue Armory, featuring 80 global galleries, publishers, and print studios. The event showcased a diverse range of works, from 19th-century Japanese ukiyo-e masterworks by Hokusai to contemporary pieces by artists such as Kiki Smith, Julie Mehretu, and David Hockney. Notable highlights included Kiki Smith’s massive 12-foot watercolor "Wooden Moon" and Paula Rego’s influential abortion etchings, which were recently acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

A Dutch museum has just put its fake Van Gogh on show

The Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo has broken traditional museum protocol by placing a known forgery, "Seascape at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer," on public display. Acquired in 1928 by museum founder Helene Kröller-Müller from the notorious Berlin dealer Otto Wacker, the painting was eventually exposed as a fake created by Wacker’s brother, Leonhard. The exhibition, which runs until June 21, coincides with a new podcast detailing the history of the acquisition and the subsequent fraud trial that rocked the art world in the 1930s.

Jasper Johns Keeps Looking

Jasper Johns’s latest exhibition at Gagosian, 'Between the Clock and the Bed,' serves as a profound meditation on the artist's career-long investigation into the 'things the mind already knows.' By revisiting his signature motifs—including flags, targets, and crosshatch patterns—the show highlights Johns’s rejection of Abstract Expressionist spontaneity in favor of a deliberate, analytical process using encaustic and collage. The works document a transformation where familiar symbols are rendered into a complex visual language that bridges the gap between memory and physical presence.

Christie’s to sell an almost unknown Van Gogh double-sided drawing

A previously obscure double-sided drawing by Vincent van Gogh, created in the final weeks of his life, will be auctioned by Christie's in Paris. The sheet features a study of female pea pickers on one side and a landscape on the other, complete with color notations indicating Van Gogh's intention to develop them into paintings. The work has been authenticated by the Van Gogh Museum and carries an estimate of €100,000-€150,000.

Revealed: the amazing frame once created for Van Gogh’s Sunflowers

A long-lost, custom-designed Art Deco frame for Vincent van Gogh's painting "Three Sunflowers" has been identified through archival research. The frame, which featured a dark lacquer finish, randomly placed gold circles, and angled outer edges, was commissioned by the Parisian couturier and collector Jacques Doucet shortly after he acquired the painting in 1912. Its existence was pieced together from a 1930s interior photograph, a 1967 family snapshot, and a frame sold at Sotheby's in 1989, allowing for a digital reconstruction of the complete artwork.

Van Gogh goes to China, with a more affordable early painting

Christie's is auctioning Vincent van Gogh's early painting 'A Girl in a Wood' in Hong Kong on March 27, with an estimate of $1.3m-$2.6m. The work, recently redated to August 1883, is being offered directly in Asia, bypassing major Western previews, to target Chinese collectors.

Australia Is Getting Its First Major Takashi Murakami Retrospective

The Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney will host Australia's first major Takashi Murakami retrospective, opening in December 2026. Titled simply "Takashi Murakami," the exhibition spans 30 years and features 150 works, including paintings, sculptures, video, and large-scale installations. It will occupy part of the gallery's Naala Badu building and will debut new works created specifically for the show in the vast Nelson Packer Tank space.

Emmanuel Di Donna Mounts Major Salvador Dalí Show as Final Exhibition in Madison Avenue Space

Emmanuel Di Donna is presenting a major Salvador Dalí exhibition, "Dalí: The Great Years, 1929–1939," at his Madison Avenue gallery from April 16 to June 13. The show features over two dozen paintings, sculptures, and works on paper from the artist's most formative decade, assembled with loans from major institutions like the Art Institute of Chicago and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It will be the final exhibition in Di Donna's current space before he launches a new joint venture with Pace and David Schrader.