The New York edition of the European Fine Art Fair, or TEFAF, has returned to the Park Avenue Armory with its grab-bag of antiquities, historic and cutting-edge design, jewels, and modern and contemporary art. The flagship edition in Maastricht is a fusty affair known for its offerings of Old Masters, while the New York version is a feast of exciting juxtapositions—or a long-simmering identity crisis, depending on your perspective.
Some 91 galleries are participating in the fair’s 2023 edition, which fills the Park Avenue Armory through May 16. The blue-chip presenters include David Zwirner, Pace, Gladstone Gallery, Gallery Hyundai, Mnuchin Gallery, and Thaddaeus Ropac. Jump scare warning: Gagosian, located immediately inside the Armory’s great hall, brought a blown-up image from Jeff Koons’ smug “Made in Heaven” series, in which the nude artist is entwined with his former wife, the porn star La Cicciolina.
TEFAF New York lacks the dedicated irreverence of Spring/Break or the focus of Independent, which has curated an admirably inclusive show downtown. Accordingly, the fair is best approached piece by piece. Thankfully, many pieces for sale are exquisite.
Keep an eye out for David Zwirner’s solo presentation of Joseph Albers, which spotlights his seminal series “Variant/Adobe,” started in 1947. A standout is the painting Browns, Ochre, Yellow (1948). Mayor Gallery is reintroducing the singular geometric compositions of Verena Loewensberg (1912–1986), a dancer, weaver, designer, and impressive color theorist based for most of her life in Zurich. Meanwhile, Demisch Danant has brought elegant wall textiles by Sheila Hicks and an eye-catching crimson lacquer console by Maria Pergay.
Below are our picks of the best booths TEFAF New York 2023 has to offer.
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Martha Jungwirth at Thaddaeus Ropac
Image Credit: Courtesy Thaddaeus Ropac Thaddaeus Ropac dedicated its booth to Martha Jungwirth, an 83-year-old Viennese painter who only recently got her first solo show, at the Albertina museum in Vienna. It was long overdue, as she has an exuberant abstract practice. With a few strokes of red and black paint, she transforms large sheets of craft paper and discarded cardboard into volcanic outpourings of desire. In contrast to her contemporary Minimalists, Jungwirth isn’t interested in dissolving the self into color and line. Instead, the sticky bits of humanity—longing, vulnerability, conquest—are distilled to their essence.
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Petzel Gallery
Image Credit: Tessa Solomon/ARTnews The Mountain Bar, which doubles as an art installation and cocktail bar, by the Cuban American artist Jorge Pardo, fills Petzel’s booth. Constructed of wood and red-lacquered panels, the work was transported from Pardo’s Los Angeles studio which, for a time, actually was a working bar. It’s complemented by crimson hanging lamps that variously evoke Chinese lanterns and bright-shelled beetles. This booth exemplifies what TEFAF excels in: stunning objects which prod the boundary between art and design.
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Meret Oppenheim at Di Donna Galleries
Image Credit: Tessa Solomon/ARTnews Following Meret Oppenheim’s triumphant MoMA retrospective, Di Donna Galleries has dedicated its booth solely to the visionary Swiss artist. It’s good timing all around, given the growing market clamor for female Surrealists. Oppenheim’s idiosyncrasies and wit are plenty delightful, and Di Donna has assembled an eclectic display that speaks to the diversity of her oeuvre—something often overshadowed by the fame of Object (1936), her little furry teacup in MoMA’s collection. A standout sculpture at the booth, Eichhörnchen (Squirrel), from 1969–70, has been ported straight from the MoMA show. A covered glass sprouting a bushy squirrel tail, it does share Object’s spirit.
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W& K-Wienerroither & Kohlbacher
Image Credit: Courtesy W&K-Wienerroither & Kohlbacher, Vienna and New York W& K-Wienerroither & Kohlbacher, with locations in Vienna and New York, brought an abundance of its specialty, Austrian Expressionism and international modernism. Gustav Klimt is represented by Study of a Gorgon in the “Beethoven Frieze” (1901), a disquieting sketch of a nude woman whose face is obscured by a sheet of black hair. There are respectable works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Joan Miró, too, but the best of the booth are the languid drawings by Egon Schiele. In a standout piece tucked in the corner, his female sitter is rendered in simple black lines that transform rough brown paper into a lush vision. It’s a magical work.
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Karma Gallery
Image Credit: Courtesy Karma, New York Karma presents a wide range of paintings by artists including Gertrude Abercrombie, Lois Dodd, Lynne Drexler, and Manoucher Yektai that seemingly express psychological states through architecture. A subdued winter scene by the late Matthew Wong features a shuttered flower reaching for the distant moon. In an unsettling 1966 work, Giorgio de Chirico has animated the classical architecture of Turin as a panoptic tower, casting a sharp shadow over the tiny passesrby. De Chirico deemed these “metaphysical paintings,” and said they were meant to “look upon everything in the world as an enigma.” Karma took that phrase as the title of its presentation and a warning to the viewer: home, as defined here, belongs to the uncanny realm.
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Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts
Image Credit: Courtesy Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts, LLC, New York The booth offers a pair of breathtaking seascape murals by N. C. Wyeth that stretch from the floor to ceiling, as well as an additional work by his son, Andrew. Equally exciting are two Winold Reiss Art Deco murals commissioned for the Longchamps restaurant at the Empire State Building. For decades, the two oval murals were believed to have vanished, until the gallery director, Ken Sims, spotted them for sale on 1stdibs.com, labeled “Monumental Art Deco Paintings of Stylized Women.” The location of the six other murals from the series is a mystery, though Bernard Goldberg, owner of the gallery, recently told the New York Times that he hopes the TEFAF presentation will help someone identify them, wherever they’re hiding.