It has been two years since the last European Art Fair. Hosted at the Park Avenue Armory, the European Art Fair will be shown in person from May 6-10. The event had to be postponed many times due to the pandemic, and art lovers are dying to see it. The event will include more than 90 art dealers with many highest-profile entries. The entries will include work from Independent New York, Art Basel, TEFAF Maastricht, and Masterpiece London.
Hidde van Seggelen, the fair’s chairman and a dealer of contemporary art, said, “It’s going to be a very busy couple of months. It’s not an ideal world.”
The event will present the 35th Maastricht edition of antique artwork. New York is also open to looking at contemporary art of today. The Creative Spaces program will present works from Anselm Kiefer, Duane Hanson and Carmen Herrera. The TEFAF Museum Restoration Fund will support work on display. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, will provide funds to support the Montefiore Mainz Mahzor, which is a rare Hebrew festival prayer book. The book has been dated from 1310-20.
The gallery will show a diverse collection of sculptures. One of the works, “Gorilles de Pierre,” is created by François-Xavier Lalanne that shows two animal heads made of stone. The Galerie Bernard Dulon from Paris will show a 19th-century royal mask from the kingdom of Bekom. This touches on classical African art.
Lui Wienerroither said, “The New York public that attends the fair is really well informed. They know so much about our art, partly because of the Neue Galerie.” He adds, “There’s a lot of demand for drawings. It’s a primary way of producing art, and it feels so direct. Online fairs didn’t really work for us.”
The pandemic has been a tough patch for artists who want to share their work in the world. The art industry has lost 2.7 million jobs and more than $150 billion in sales over the pandemic. The American South suffers the most losses in the arts. People are outsourcing to local art events, which can benefit smaller artists. Many people do prefer to see the work in person instead of a scanned rendition on Google.
Blum & Poe’s said, “You often get lost in the shuffle. But for this, a distilled focused project, to have it in the beautiful space of the Armory with a select group of dealers, I can’t think of a better situation.”
To see the art fair, you can register for the event using this link here.
