Subodh Gupta's 'Family Nest No. 3' (2012) is priced at €200,000.

International contemporary art collectors will gather in Switzerland next week for an annual shopping spree. Art Basel, the leading global fair for 20th- and 21st-century art, opens its doors to the general public Thursday until Sunday after a series of invitation-only viewings. Some 65,000 collectors, museum curators, artists, dealers and other aficionados from around the world visited the event last year.

"Basel is small, but for a few days, it is the capital of the art world," says Helsinki dealer Ilona Anhava of Galerie Anhava. She ticks off a number of factors that have made Art Basel a powerful global player since its foundation by a small group of Swiss dealers in 1970. These include the "super high quality of the art" and the presence of "all the important elephant galleries of the art market," while still retaining a feeling that "you have an opportunity to discover new things."

At Art Basel, more than 300 galleries from 36 countries will be showing approximately 2,500 artists working in all forms, including painting, sculpture, photography, film and video, as well as mixed-media, installation and performance art. The galleries were chosen from around 1,000 applicants. The biggest contingent, with 73 galleries, will be from the U.S., followed by Germany, with 55; Switzerland, 31; Great Britain, 30; France, 27; and Italy, 15. Other galleries include participants from Eastern Europe, Russia, South America, China, South Korea, India, South Africa and New Zealand.

Art Unlimited, a section where galleries show outsized works that are too big for their stands, is usually pretty spectacular. This year, some 62 projects are on the agenda, including sculptures, paintings and photographic series. The Gagosian Gallery will show a new film by American artist Richard Phillips called "First Point," featuring Lindsay Lohan and today's surf and beach scene; a film by Scottish artist Douglas Gordon based on the classic 1955 movie "Rebel without a Cause"; and a sculpture by Austrian artist Franz West that depicts the complex inner structure of the human body through intertwining pink coils. Hauser & Wirth of Zurich, London and New York will exhibit "Big Pig" (2009-10), a pink fiberglass-and-aluminum abstract pig by Californian artist Richard Jackson, noted for his absurd but thought-provoking creations; and English artist Phyllida Barlow's "untitled: stage" (2011), a bridge made from red-painted timber that leads who knows where.

In the main gallery section, Hauser & Wirth will have an impressive roundup of international contemporary stars, including India's Subodh Gupta and Germany's Isa Genzken. Mr. Gupta's "Family Nest No. 3" (2012), one of the artist's iconic images filled with metal pots and pans, is priced at €200,000; and Ms. Genzken's "Untitled" (2012), a weird yet strangely attractive construction of plastic furniture and artificial flowers, at €250,000.

Ms. Anhava promises a "Finnish cocktail." "Today, contemporary art is so varied," she says. "We are showing figurative, abstract and conceptual." Among these works will be an expressionist painting by Elina Merenmies, "Draught" (2011-12) showing a man's face staring through a world of flying fish (€25,000). Alan Cristea of London will have new prints by British artist Howard Hodgkin, who is celebrating his 80th birthday this year. "Stormy Weather" (2012), a stunning, blue hand-painted print, is priced at 40,000 Swiss francs (€33,300).

Satellite fairs take place in Basel at the same time, including Liste, with 64 young galleries showcasing art in an old brewery.