Paris Challenges London’s Art Crown With Art Basel Paris 2025 Edition At Grand Palais

Hot on the heels of London’s whirlwind Frieze Week, the international art world has shifted its gaze to Paris, where Art Basel Paris 2025 opens with striking confidence at the Grand Palais. The fair cements the city’s growing dominance in the global art circuit, a kind of cultural sparring match between Paris and London, reminiscent of the famous Basquiat–Warhol boxing exhibition image.

This year’s edition gathers 206 top international galleries, including 180 in the main Galleries sector and nearly one-third based in Paris, spotlighting both the fair’s global reach and the enduring vitality of the Parisian gallery scene. A newly expanded Emergence section takes over the nave galleries with 16 solo presentations by rising artists, while the Premise section returns with nine curated booths featuring historical works, some predating 1900, in a dynamic blend of past, present, and the pulse of art’s future.

This is the second edition of Art Basel Paris in the Grand Palais, and there are a significant number of newcomers and a strong Parisian presence. I asked the fair’s outgoing director Clément Delépine how he approached the curation to encourage international diversity while maintaining the fair’s deep connection to Paris’s own creative ecosystem:

Clément Delépine, Director Art Basel Paris: “What defines Art Basel Paris, above all, is dialogue—between the local and the global, between heritage and experimentation, between Paris and the wider world. From the outset, our ambition has been to shape a fair that is deeply rooted in the city’s creative DNA while reflecting the extraordinary diversity of today’s art world. This year, we’re thrilled to welcome new voices such as Voloshyn Gallery from Kyiv and Château Shatto from Los Angeles, alongside long- time Art Basel exhibitors like Paula Cooper, Xavier Hufkens, and Lisson. That mix—of established figures and fresh perspectives, of proximity and distance—creates a certain dynamism that is essential. It’s what keeps Art Basel Paris alive and forward-looking, echoing the avant-garde spirit that has always defined this city.”

Both the Art Basel Paris public program–presented at nine of Paris’s most iconic landmarks with monumental sculptures–and the fair in the Grand Palais, show a strong presence of art inspired by animals and birds, along with much impressive textiles and ceramics.

Highlights of the public art program include Alex Da Corte’s huge inflatable Kermit the Frog at Place Vendôme, Leiko Ikemura’s vast Usagi Rabbit sculpture by the Grand Palais, Julius von Bismarck at the Petit Palais, Nate Lowman at Musée national Eugène-Delacroix, and a suite of sculptures on avenue Winston-Churchill. The public sculpture program is executed in collaboration with Miu Miu, and also features 30 Blizzards, a project by Helen Marten activated in the Palais d’Iéna.

Continuing the animal theme inside the Grand Palais is Takashi Murakami’s vast Octopus inflatable–a collaboration with Louis Vuitton–which appears at the top of the grand staircase, its colourful tentacles reaching towards the ornate banisters.

Noticeable themes that run through the fair include ceramics, textiles, anime and artists inspired by animals and nature. Maybe this trend of animals, nature and textiles in art is a result of humanity’s need for an escape from tech and feel calmed and reassured by natural, handmade objects, combined with a need to nurture the natural world and let it nurture us, especially in such troubled times for the planet. Here are some of my highlights:

Leiko Ikemura

Greeting visitors to the Grand Palais as part of the Art Basel Paris public sculpture program is Leiko Ikemura’s Usagi Greeting – a tall talismanic sculpture with rabbit ears and a human visage. Ikemura’s childhood game of spotting a rabbit’s shadow on the moon inspired the sculpture, and she first referenced the mythical Usagi figure in response to the 2011 Tonoku earthquake and Fukushima disaster, as a metaphor for suffering, resilience and renewal.

Takashi Murakami

A stunning Takashi Murakami Octopus sculpture presented by Louis Vuitton is a focal point of the fair, catching the eye when you enter the Grand Palais, it’s bright red and pink tentacles reaching towards the top of the Balcon d’Honneur. The 8-meter-tall creature welcomes visitors to the space and celebrates the launch of Louis Vuitton’s Artycapucines collection. Murakami’s colorful Octopus is accompanied by flowers, pandas, mushrooms and dragons, transforming the space into a psychedelic garden.

Murakami’s Octopus sets a precedent for a theme of sea creatures, birds and animals evident in several presentations.

Rodrigo Torres

Octopi also provide inspiration for Brazilian ceramicist Rodrigo Torres, who is exhibiting a beautiful ceramic vase decorated with an Octopus and other sea creatures, standing atop a ceramic Jules Verne novel at Brazilian gallery A Gentil Carioca. Torres’s ceramic sculptures are three-dimensional objects blending photography and paintings with literary influences.

Alex Da Corte

American artist Alex Da Corte’s inflatable Kermit the Frog sculpture is a focal point of Art Basel’s Public Program, and is presented by Sadie Coles HQ at Place Vendôme. Kermit the Frog, Even (2018) depicts the Muppet Show host in a downward dog yoga pose, and is inspired by the collapse of a Kermit balloon during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York in 1991.

Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Picasso

A vibrant green and black Warhol Zebra screen-print catches the eye at Van de Weghe, which also has an impressive Jean-Michel Basquiat silkscreen on canvas Untitled (1983) and works by Pablo Picasso which situate Basquiat’s practice in dialogue with other masters of the 20th century.

Jane Alexander

A troupe of animals in a carnivalesque procession by Jane Alexander form the focal point of Stevenson’s inaugural Art Basel Paris exhibit. Alexander’s Street Cadets with Harbinger: Wish, Walk/ Loop, Long sculpture of a rabbit, monkey and mask-wearing child incorporate found clothing, sheep pelt and paint, and its menacing undercurrent reflects the huge cultural and political shift which took place in South Africa during the 1990s. Stevenson’s presentation is titled Seismic shifts: South Africa in the ’90s, and it explores how artists Jane Alexander, Steven Cohen, Moshekwa Langa, Jo Ractliffe, Robin Rhode and Penny Siopis responded to the end of apartheid.

Hector Hyppolite

Known as the first Black Surrealist, the magical paintings of Hector Hyppolite featuring birds, flowers and nature indigenous to his native Tahiti are on display at Gallery of Everything. Andre Breton discovered the talented artist–who was also a Voodoo priest–on a visit to Tahiti. His paintings can be found in the Museum of Chicago and MoMa and he was featured in the 2024 Pompidou blockbuster Surrealism exhibition.

Born in 1894 in Saint-Marc, western Haiti, into a family of Voodoo priests, Hippolyte worked as a shoemaker and house painter before gaining recognition as an artist and becoming celebrated for his vibrant depictions of Vodou deities and spiritual life in Haiti. He produced hundreds of paintings before his untimely death in 1948 at the age of 54, just as his international reputation was growing. His rise to fame abroad was aided by the French writer and Surrealist founder André Breton, who visited Haiti in 1945 for an exhibition by Cuban painter Wifredo Lam and became captivated by the island’s Voodoo culture and Hippolyte’s visionary art.

Gina Fischl

Gina Fischl’s colourful animal sculptures form a playful group on a custom-built runway at Chapter NY and Soft Opening’s collaborative booth. Chapter NY (New York) and Soft Opening (London) are both first time participants at Art Basel Paris and joined forces for a group presentation featuring Olivia Erlanger, Stuart Middleton and Gina Fischli. Among the highlights, Fischli debuts a series of animal sculptures arranged along a custom-built runway, and form a dialogue with Erlanger’s wall sculpture of stainless-steel arrows mapping the Paris night sky in 1880.

François-Xavier Lalanne

Lalanne’s beautiful patinated copper Tortue Topiaire (Topiary tortoise) topped with lush green plants graces the Di Donna stand, next to a cabbage sculpture standing on bird feet, combining art, nature and design in organic yet surreal form and reasserting Lalanne’s dominance as a masterpiece of French design while showing the cross over of design into fine art (a Lalanne Tortue Topiaire is also exhibited at Design Miami).

Lee ShinJa

Nonogenerian textile artist Lee ShinJa has a stunning solo presentation at Tina Kim Gallery. Four Lee ShinJa textile works already sold to private collectors during the vernissage days, and a fifth is on hold with a US institution for acquisition. At the age of 95, the trailblazing fiber artist is gaining long overdue international acclaim. Her intricate handmade fiber art is inspired by childhood visits with her father to watch the sunrise in the serene landscapes of Uljin, South Korea. Visions of towering mountains meeting the vast ocean are reflected in her luminous palette and geometrical designs.

Claudette Schreuders, Lyne Lapointe and Diedrick Brackens

Claudette Schreuders playful bronze painted birds, Lyne Lapointe’s beautiful textile painting The Donkey and its weight of Gold (2025), an abstract figurative textile work by Diedrick Brackens titled The Brothers (2024) and a shimmering wall hanging by El Anatsui are highlights of Jack Shainman Gallery’s standout booth, fusing themes of animals and nature with textiles.

Julien Creuzet

French-Caribbean Venice Biennale alumni Julien Creuzet’s beautiful textile wall hanging at Andrew Kreps gallery combines his love of visual arts and poetry through an amalgamation of sculpture, textiles and installation art. Creuzet represented France at the Venice Biennale in 2024, and his work is inspired by his ancestral home of Martinique, which he calls “the heart of my imagination”. Julien Creuzet’s new wall sculpture in cast bronze from a series of works first exhibited at the Venice Biennale can be found at document space.

Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz

A uniquely sculptural wall hanging, intriguingly titled Wig Piece (Right Body, Wrong Time) II is created by geometric placement of shiny black wigs by German artist duo Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz at Marcelle Alix. Boudry and Lorenz also have an exhibition at the gallery in Paris.

Alighiero Boetti

One of Alighiero Boetti’s iconic world map textile pieces is juxtaposed with a stunning kilim at Tornabuoni Art, which exhibits a a blue ballpoint Boetti drawing and one of his iconic Mappa tapestries with works by Giorgio Morandi and Lucio Fontana, two pioneers of 20th-century language.

Barbara Bloom

A verdant green wool rug created by Barbara Bloom and inspired by a vintage copy of Nabokov’s infamous tome Lolita dominates the booth at Raffaella Corte.

Art Basel Paris runs from 24th-26th October, 2025 at the Grand Palais, Paris. Find more information here.