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At TEFAF New York, the Masterpiece Market Had Plenty to Celebrate

From record attendance and swift blue-chip sales to tightly curated presentations of Ida Barbarigo, Man Ray, Leonora Carrington and Jean Prouvé, the fair delivered on every front.

For four days, TEFAF brought its unmistakable European flair to New York’s Park Avenue Armory, gathering 90 exhibitors that mounted presentations showcasing everything from modern and contemporary masterpieces to antiques, decorative arts and jewelry. While the New York edition tends to give more prominence to modern and contemporary artworks—not least because it takes place in conjunction with the May marquee auctions—this year’s fair still offered gems for all tastes and price points.

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The fair opened for the Collector Preview with record attendance on May 14, with visitors packing the booths with the classic champagne flute in hand. Yet it wasn’t all spectacle and chatter. At the end of the day, dealers had already reported sales across price tiers and categories, with a general sense that confidence had significantly improved and that collectors were engaging with a new level of seriousness, both in their questions and in their transactions. Blue-chip postwar names with solid institutional recognition, in particular, moved fast. Italian gallery ML Fine Art placed an iconic Andy Warhol Mao in the first hour, while Mennour sold a stunning Lucio Fontana Concetto Spaziale for $2.3 million.

Bologna-based Galleria d’Arte Maggiore g.a.m. reported selling a Natura morta, dated 1946, by Giorgio Morandi, as well as a work by Italian pop artist Giosetta Fioroni, Lampadina, from 1960, that was included in her solo show at New York’s Drawing Center in 2013. A true gem in the booth was the prototype of Meret Oppenheim’s iconic Souvenir de la déjeuner en fourrure, 1970 (the original is in the MoMA collection), which found a buyer on the first day. The gallery also reported entertaining active negotiations for works by Dadamaino and Léger. No stranger to the New York scene, Galleria d’Arte Maggiore g.a.m. has been active in the market since 2007, first through participation in The Armory Show—where they also served on the selection committee—and, for the past few years, at TEFAF New York. “Returning to New York is always an opportunity to meet with our collectors, who over the years have also become friends and who never miss a chance to visit us in Bologna at our gallery’s historic headquarters, as well as in Venice at our foundation, ACP Palazzo Franchetti by Fondazione Calarota, or in Paris at our new exhibition space on Boulevard Saint-Germain,” Alessia Calarota, the second-generation owner who leads the gallery today, told Observer, emphasizing how the gallery has also collaborated with many local institutions, including the Met, to which they lent several works for the major Giorgio Morandi exhibition in 2008.

Pace Di Donna Schrader Galleries introduced the new secondary-market partnership between Pace Gallery, Emmanuel Di Donna and David Schrader with its first shared booth at TEFAF, anchored by a 1956 Rothko, a rare Eugène Delacroix painting and exemplary works by Alexander Calder, Jean Arp and Joan Mitchell. “Opening day was met with enthusiasm around the new venture from a range of collector groups,” partner Emmanuel Di Donna told Observer, noting how it’s clear there’s a serious audience for Modern and Postwar work of a certain caliber. “At TEFAF those collectors had the chance to see firsthand how PDS can bring together major names of the period—including artists like Mark Rothko, who remains at the very center of today’s market—in a presentation rooted in artworks of historical significance and rarity.” He added that there’s a real appetite for what their new partnership offers, a partnership that “has a different energy than anything any of us have done before.”

Several booths sold out during the preview, including blue-chip galleries that opted for focused solo presentations of in-demand contemporary artists. Lévy Gorvy Dayan, for instance, dedicated its booth to small, intimate paintings by Jenna Gribbon, while Gagosian presented Kathleen Ryan’s shining Bad Fruit sculptures and Gladstone sold 20 works by Czech painter Anna Zemánková for prices ranging from $75,000 to $125,000. Meanwhile, White Cube seemed to have no qualms about showcasing Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang’s pyrotechnic abstraction in a solo booth after the backlash just a few months ago over the alleged environmental harm and cultural desecration caused by his performance in Tibet.

Thaddaeus Ropac also devoted his TEFAF booth to a contemporary rising star, staging the U.S.........

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