Zona Maco, one of Latin America’s largest and most important fairs, opened to VIPs on Wednesday, and by the afternoon, the consensus from participating galleries was clear: the crowd was high-energy, there were lots of quality collectors from both Latin America and the US, and sales were being closed, though not always for the highest-priced works on view.
“There’s been amazing energy. This is probably the best first day we’ve had in the last five or six years of the fair,” José Kuri, cofounder of Kurimanzutto, told ARTnews.
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By the end of Wednesday, Kurimanzutto reported selling five paintings by Roberto Gil de Montes for values between $25,000 and $60,000, a Gabriel Orozco drawing from his “Diario de Plantas” series for $35,000 and Leonor Antunes’s sculpture Ana #1 for $90,000. Works by Damian Ortega, Dr Lakra, Gabriel Kuri, Daniel Guzman, Danh Vo, and Bárbara Sánchez-Kane also sold, with prices starting at $3,000 and topping out below the Antunes. Two of the works went to trustees at SFMOMA and the Denver Art Museum; Kuri said he expects that eventually, they’ll go in those museums’ collections, though he didn’t specify which works.
The two priciest pieces in the booth—a gold-and-red plant work by Orozco, priced at $300,000, and the large-scale Oscar Murillo painting manifestation (2020–22), priced at $550,000—had yet to be sold by the end of Wednesday. In the case of the Murillo, Kuri said they are holding out for a collector from the region.
“Our quest with Oscar is to place it with a Mexican or South American collector. We’re building a market,” he said, adding that the local collector base is maturing. “More and more are making decisions quicker. Before, it was a lot of talking. Art is an impulse, and you have to close when the impulse is there.”
An installation view of Kurimanzutto’s booth at Zona Maco 2025. In the background is Oscar Murillo’s 2020-2022 painting manifestation.
Notable attendees at the fair included Jorge Pérez of the Pérez Art Museum Miami; Brooklyn Museum director Anne Pasternak; trustee groups from the Brooklyn Museum, SFMOMA, and ICA LA; collectors Jeff and Rona Citrin and Isabel and Agustín Coppel; and other top Mexican and Latin American collectors.
Pace’s presentation was one of the most striking ones at the fair, with the booth painted in bright yellow and pink, mimicking the color palette of buildings by the famed Mexican architect Luis Barragán. There were works by Arlene Shechet, Dan Flavin, and James Turrell, the latter two held in an alcove of the booth that allows a respite from the busy fair.
The takeaway from Pace was similar to Kurimanzutto, if at a higher price range: strong energy and several sales, though the top works in the booth remain available. Works sold included a 2024 work on paper by British painter Nigel Cooke for $110,000, a 2024 painting by Kylie Manning for $100,000, a 2024 Shechet sculpture from her “Together” series for $75,000, and three new works on paper for $40,000 a piece by Robert Nava, who Cultured reported last month is seeing a surge in demand amid an ongoing show curated at Pace Los Angeles and a solo exhibition in New York next month.
The highest price work brought to Maco by Pace (and, by my research, the fair in general) is a 2002 Agnes Martin painting with vertical bands, Untitled #5, priced at $5.5 million. The gallery also brought two recently painted Julian Schnabel portraits of Frida Kahlo painted on broken dishes, priced at $550,000 each.
An installation view of Sean Kelly’s booth at Zona Maco 2025. In the center is the Marina Abramović work The Message. On the left is Kehinde Wiley’s Congo Study II.
Courtesy of Sean Kelly Gallery
Sean Kelly Gallery, which has participated in the last seven editions of Maco, brought a wide range of artists at prices ranging from $12,000 to $225,000, with some emphasis on Latin American artists on the roster, including Ana González and Jose Dávila. There were also several works by Marina Abramović, coinciding with her Art Week performance at La Cuadra San Cristóbal and the debut at the fair of her latest work The Message, a life-size black-and-white print priced at $125,000.
“We really wanted to make sure that all levels of collectors have accessibility, and there are different access points,” partner Lauren Kelly told ARTnews.
The gallery had a strong first day, selling an Anthony Akinbola “Camouflage” painting for $30,000–$40,000, a González work, and a mixed-media sculpture by Brian Rochefort, who will appear in the upcoming Made in L.A. biennial, both for $20,000–$30,000. Also sold at the fair were a Janaina Tschape painting for $100,000–$125,000, several sculptures and a painting by Davila for between $65,000 to $100,000 each, and numerous other works on paper ranging between $10,000 to $40,000. The top work sold was a Kehinde Wiley painting Congo Study II for $225,000.
A range of prices and a long history of local ties seemed to be key for the other big Mexico City galleries, like OMR and Proyectos Monclova. At the latter, which featured work from Mexican and Latin American artists across its roster at prices ranging from $5,000 up to $180,000, sales director Alexandra Lovera told ARTnews that the gallery had placed most of the work on view on Wednesday, and that the team would swap out nearly the entire presentation for Thursday.
“It feels like people are back. People are super excited. You can feel the energy,” Lovera said. “The middle six months of last year were terrible for us at the fairs. Hong Kong was great, but Korea was terrible, the Armory Show was terrible. We did [MIRA Art Fair] in Paris, terrible. [In December] Miami was incredible for us, and now we’re up again.”
OMR also reported numerous sales at its booth between $20,000 and $120,000, though both that gallery and Monclova declined to provide specifics.
For the smaller and midsize galleries, sales seemed more sporadic, though multiple dealers told ARTnews they remained optimistic due to the level of foot traffic and the apparent interest from collectors, both local and international.
At La Caja Negra, which focuses mostly on works on paper and editions, founder Issa Benitez told ARTnews that the gallery had sold some smaller works, but its highest-value pieces, including several Richard Serras priced at $70,000 each and an Anish Kapoor, were still available.
“It’s a bit cautious, slightly. It’s very subtle, but I feel it,” said Benitez, who has participated in Maco since its first edition and who also runs Mexico City’s Proyectos Paralelo. “It’s not hysterical like some other years, but we’ll see because it’s been back and forth with the tariffs. Everything’s uncertain. But there’s a lot of people, a lot of foreigners, a lot of Americans, and a good vibe.”
Meanwhile, at New York’s PALO Gallery, which dedicated its booth to work by Atlanta-based painter Lewinale Havette, founder Paul Henkel said early on Wednesday that he had sold numerous drawings to an art collecting club from University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business at $1,500 a piece, and that he had a large painting on reserve from a US corporate collection for $24,000, but had yet to sell the other paintings, priced between $16,000 and $20,000. Still, Henkel seemed impressed by Maco, where PALO was showing for the first time.
“The energy is palpable. The aisles are full. We have had a ton of interest,” he said. “It’s a very different environment than Art Cologne, which was the last fair we did.”
For many of the emerging galleries in the Ejes section, the focus seemed to be as much on the Erarta Foundation Art Prize, which awards $100,000 to an artist and gallery picked by attendees, as sales. It was an oft-heard refrain throughout the day from dealers to not forget to vote for their booth in the prize.
At New York’s Swivel Gallery, founder Graham Wilson told ARTnews that the gallery had sold five of nine linked paintings by Mexican artist Rodrigo Ramírez for $9,000 each. By the end of the day, the presentation, titled “Perpetually In Rot” and hung so that Ramírez’s swirling, richly colored, and seemingly violent anthropomorphic bodies immerse the viewer, was shortlisted for the prize.
“It’s a massive prize, so that’s really what’s on my mind,” Wilson said when asked about sales. “It’s $100,000, so that’s more than what’s in the booth.”
An installation view of Vanessa Baird’s Lost Humanity: One Way Ticket to Mars at OSL Contemporary.
Courtesy of OSL Contemporary
One presentation that did not make the shortlist, but was no doubt the most talked about at the fair was over at Norway’s OSL Contemporary, which dedicated its entire booth to a single installation by Vanessa Baird, who recently had a survey at Oslo’s Munch Museum. The installation, a new work that follows a similar installation at Munch, covers the walls in scrolls which Baird has filled with bodies suffering violence and conflict. On the right side of the installation is written the words, End the Occupation Boycott Israel.
“It’s had a massive response,” Baird told ARTnews. “It’s an emotional piece of work. And I wanted it to have that emotion because a genocide is what has been happening, and it is absolutely necessary to talk about it.”
Baird’s piece, priced at $200,000, was notable for a fair that has long been known for hosting more politically engaged and socially focused work than other similar events. Erika Harrsch, a Mexican artist who has shown work at Maco for years, told ARTnews that while she couldn’t think of another fair in which Baird’s work could be shown, the volume of such challenging work has gradually lessened at Maco since Covid.
“It’s much less every year,” she said. “Last year, there was almost nothing political.”
For that, it seems, you’ll now have to go to two art fairs taking place simultaneously: Material and Salón Acme.
