The first 365 days after the global pandemic emergency were extremely important for the art world: the recovery of the market and of exhibition events didn’t have long to wait for.

Starting from the market, we can say that the most important art fairs such as Art Basel and Frieze have returned to their regular calendars, experiencing excellent sales performances. These two have also expanded their appointments with Frieze Seoul at the beginning of September 2022 and Paris+par Art Basel at the end of October. Other major players such as Tefaf Maastricht have returned to open to the public after two years of exclusively online editions.





Turning to auction houses scenario, Sotheby's and Christie's close their balance with record sales, often due to single rounds such as the recent sale of the Paul G. Allen collection, which reached a record $1.6bn at the auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie.
As for Sotheby's, the second part of the sale of the ex-spouses Macklowes' collection should be noted, which recorded $246.1m.
We have also to mention individual works, such as Andy Warhol's "Shot Sage Blue Marilyn" (1964) sold at Christie's for $195m, becoming the most expensive artwork from the 20th century to sell at auction.





Smaller auction houses, such as Artcurial, have also performed well. The latter recorded the highest turnover of the last twenty years (216.5 million Euros)
As far as the global geo-political situation is concerned, the European winds of war have not touched the global art market, even if the last art fair of the year (Art Basel Miami) recorded not exceptional sale results.
If in 2022 we started the year talking about NFT, this time we conclude it by recording the dizzying collapse of the medium, especially in the artistic field. To be precise, the trade down registered an astonishing 98%. As usual many art critics reported the causes to downward trend in the value of the major cryptocurrencies, predicting new growth in 2023. We'll see if these forecasts will be correct.





Now let’s speak about museum exhibitions: the protagonists were undoubtedly solo shows and social issues, starting with the Russian-Ukrainian war and Iran protest topics.
Starting from May 2022 we can mention the unmissable retrospective dedicated to Michael Armitage at the Kunsthalle in Basel, then moving on to masters of art history such as Raphael at the Florentine Palazzo Strozzi, Marlene Dumas at Palazzo Grassi (still in progress) and Bruce Nauman at Punta della Dogana, Anish Kapoor at Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice and Alice Neel at the Center Pompidou.
The 59th edition of the Venice Biennale “The Milk of Dreams” deserves a separate chapter: its curator and artistic director Cecilia Alemani has gained the second position in the prestigious ArtReview Power 100 2022 thanks to the amazing project she made. The Golden Lion award was won by Sonia Boyce for the British Pavilion.





In conclusion 2022 was an extremely interesting year full of achivements for the artistic world: let's hope that 2023 will be at the same level.