The difficulty of going to an art fair, as anyone who has attended more than one can tell you, is holding on to the artworks that grab you.
This is especially true for contemporary art fairs where, more often than not, market trends influence the work that art dealers bring. If figuration or assemblage is de rigueur, then the booths are likely to be filled with it. Even when the booth presentations are excellent, they have a tendency to blur together.
That muddling is much less likely at a fair like the European Fine Art Fair in Maastrict, Netherlands, where galleries bring works spanning Old Masters, antiques, jewelry, tribal art, modern and contemporary art, ancient art, and design. There’s far more variety and each gallery’s presentation is a demonstration of its idiosyncrasy. The strongest presentations tend to span eras, with works that speak to each other across time and geography in unexpected ways. Those little surprises stick with you.
Below, are seven of the most outstanding booths at TEFAF.
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Sean Kelly
Image Credit: Daniel Cassady Among the more successful temporal mashups was at Sean Kelly, where the center of the booth was occupied by a large, ornate Kehinde Wiley portrait of Issa Diatta, his posture reminiscent of a 18th century general overlooking a successful maneuver on the battlefield. One foot is casually crossed over the other, as he holds his chin up and carries a sheathed sword in his left hand. Everything else about Diatta is strikingly modern, the deep blue of his sweatshirt, the gold chain that hangs low around his neck, the purple and black wristbands. He’s a man out of time. To the left of the painting, handing off the wall, is an actual 18th century sword made of English decorative cut steel. Its decorative, glittering hilt shines in the booth lights.
Also notable is Wu Chi-Tsung’s large Cyano-Collage, a combination of cyanotype photography, Xuan paper, acrylic gel, and acrylic, mounted on aluminum board. “Is it the ocean or a mountain? Or perhaps an ocean mountain?” one visitor to the booth asked. “It’s up to you what you see in it,” one of the booth attendants said. “What do you see?” “Ah, yes, definitely an ocean mountain.”
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Artur Ramon Art
Image Credit: Daniel Cassady In the booth of Barcelona-based gallery Artur Ramon Art is a collection of works that, while each is from different era, speak to each other like old friends over brunch. On the top left is a 1927 Urushi lacquer panel, Girl on the Balcony, by the Catalan artist Ramon Sarsanedas—a rare example of Art Deco work from Barcelona. The bold cubist-inflected reds and blacks contrast and compliment the rich and delicate oil on marble work by an anonymous Roman artist from the 1600s that hangs to its right, Virgin with Child and Felix of Cantalice.
Beneath the marble picture is a terracotta relief by the sadly underrecognized Catalan artist Manolo Hugue. Femme assise could be the one of the quintessential TEFAF works. Made in 1930, the image of a reclining figure with crossed legs, leaning back on one elbow while stroking its hair, looks like it could have come from the hand of an ancient Greek as much as a contemporary artist.
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Colnaghi
Image Credit: Daniel Cassady A second century marble head of a young Roman Imperial man is among the more lively sculptures at the fair. His thick curls of hair created with both drill work and incisions could make someone with even the most conditioned locks jealous. His face is done in almost a completely different style, delicate and fine yet with evidence of a powerful bone structure beneath the skin. The lips are so perfectly weighted that it would not be surprising if he started to blow you a kiss.
To the left is a tall full body picture by the Spanish artist Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, Portrait of Maria Plana de Gil with Black Mantilla Shawl (1906). It’s one of the first pictures Sorolla made al fresco. The lively, quick brush strokes show a painter who is completely confident in the subject and composition. Sorolla was so confident that, a year later, he would paint the Queen of Spain in the exact same position.
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Stair Sainty Gallery
Image Credit: Courtesy Stair Sainty Gallery At the back of Guy Stair Sainty’s booth are two works that, while made just a year apart, are radically different. In Pierre Amédéé Marcel-Beronneau’s circa 1905 picture Salomé, the Judean princess stares back at the viewer, full of confidence and pride, as blood drips down her hand. While her face and part of her body are portrayed figuratively, the rest of her body is constructed out of geometric shapes that make her seem like she is barely contained in crystals. To the left is Ferdinand Keller’s Diana (1906). The goddess of the hunt is portrayed in a soft manner where the ends of her skin almost bleed into the dark background of the picture. She holds a bow in her left hand and is leaning in such a way as to form an almost mirror image of Marcel-Beronneau’s Salomé.
The real standout, however, is the dramatic The Burial of Manon Lescaut (1878) by Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret. The scene was taken from Abbé Prévost’s 1731 novel The Story of the Chevalier des Grieux and Manon Lescaut and was once owned by Levi Parsons Morton, the 22nd Vice-President of the United States, who also served as a member of the House of Representatives, U.S. Ambassador to France, and Governor of New York.
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David Tunick, Inc.
Image Credit: Daniel Cassady The dark and cozy booth of paper specialist David Tunick is filled with impressive works by Edvard Munch and Albrecht Dürer. However, at the rear of the booth is a true spectacle, a gigantic woodcut, printed on 12 separate sheets from 12 blocks by Tiziano Vecellio, better known as Titian. At over four feet by nine feet, The Submersion of Pharaoh’s Army in the Red Sea (around 1514-1516) is awe-inspiring. One can feel the weight of the finely carved waves as they crush over the Pharaoh’s horses and cavalrymen, while on the opposite side Moses and the Israelites watch from safety and a woman lovingly cradles a small child in her arms.
Much less forceful but perhaps equally dramatic is the small Edvard Munch dry point Two People (The Lonely Ones) (1894). Placed at the entrance to the booth, the greyscale image of two figures staring out at the beach plays beautifully off the imposing scene in Titian’s woodcut. Munch loved to explore the same themes in different mediums and in the back of the booth is another version of The Lonely Ones, a woodcut printed in 1899 on fine Japanese paper, featuring simplified lines without lacking any depth of the velvety dry point version.
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Kunsthandel P. de Boer B.V.
Image Credit: Daniel Cassady A list of standout booths at the fair would be incomplete without mentioning de Boer’s massive, trompe l’oeil work that takes center stage at the booth.
“Well, first of all, it’s ‘blame the frame’,” said Niels R.P de Boer, who bought the 6.5 ft x 9.8 ft ornate frame in England. “Then I realized, well, I either have to find the picture that was once in it or find another, more interesting way to fill it.”
The frame, which is filled with 17th and 18th century trompe l’oeil works and prints is also decorated with a pair of antique scissors and a round frame for a pair of glasses, the only modern element in the work. Hanging on the outside of the booth is a pair of wonderful pen paintings by Willem Van de Velde the Elder that depict an at-sea war council by the Dutch naval fleet four days before a battle begins with admiral Issaäc Sweers’ flagship The Gouda at the center of the action.