Indian work was doing well at the booth of U.S.- and London-based gallery Aicon, however. The gallery, which focuses on Indian contemporary art and was located in the main section of the fair, sold G.R. Iranna’s Wounded Tools II, a sculpture of a donkey-tiger hybrid creature carrying tools, for around $30,000. Mirage, a small painting by Anandajit Ray, also went, for $9,000.

Some galleries planned their booths to reflect current happenings in Madrid's art scene: There's a large Francis Bacon show at the Prado Museum, and plenty of Bacons at ARCO. New York–based Marlborough Gallery provided the top lot, and the most expensive work at the fair overall, with a 1986 large-scale painting priced at $13 million. London's Faggionato Fine Art had two small 1960s studies for $3.5 million that were already reserved after the first day in a deal not directly related to the fair. And on the cheaper end of the Bacon spectrum, a Seated Woman was available for €24,000 plus VAT at Barcelona's Poligrafia Obra Grafica. Meanwhile, two galleries celebrated the Prado itself, showing identical prints entitled Museo del Prado 2 from an edition of 10 by German photographer Thomas Struth. New York's Marian Goodman Gallery was offering the print, which shows Asian visitors in the museum’s Velázquez halls, for €50,000.

One of the more popular artists at ARCO was Alicia Framis, a young Spaniard educated in Amsterdam who currently lives in Shanghai. Four galleries from three countries were selling her work, which imagines ironic and absurdist building projects for major Chinese cities in a clear mockery of the construction boom spurred by the Chinese Olympics. The work ranged from €6,000–10,000 for editioned prints to €12,000 for architectural models. Framis is also included in a group exhibition, “Risk Zones,” currently on view at Madrid’s “La Caixa” Foundation Contemporary Art Collection. An international program for special ARCO guests included a visit to the show, where one could see her “Welcome to Guantánamo Museum,” a fictional project envisioning a museum on the grounds of the infamous and soon-to-be-closed correctional facility.

Modernist masters and blue-chip artists were popular at the fair, as were the galleries that exhibited them. Paris's Galerie 1900–2000 had a well-attended booth where works by Hans Bellmer, Man Ray, Richard Prince, and Ben Vautier were in clear dialogue with one another. Peigne (Comb), a rare Marcel Duchamp readymade from 1916–64 in private hands, and priced at €360,000, had attracted universal interest but no buyers at the time of this writing. A local dealer, Leandro Navarro, had success on the first day with a Baltasar Lobo sculpture that went to a Swiss collector for €160,000. Navarro also has a small 1919 Amédée Ozenfant painting depicting a wine glass for €280,000 and an excellent Balthus drawing from 1950 for €100,000. The dealer confessed that the recession had brought pricing problems but insisted that his tags were reasonable.

While the fair is markedly international, its participants clearly value American influence. When talking about more obscure artists, dealers were quick to note if they were included in American collections and museum shows. And there were some American collectors in attendance, although galleries almost always mentioned European buyers. As for local collectors, that market is small, and the recession certainly hasn't helped — one Spanish gallerist went so far as to call it “nonexistent.”

Still, the mood was not gloomy at ARCO, as dealers have clearly thought out new strategies and adjusted their expectations for the fair's outcome. “We had no hopes for this event,” said Faggionato Fine Art director Anne Pryer, “but we're doing well.”