NEW YORK, NY.- A bustling crowd filled the historic Park Avenue Armory yesterday, signaling the start of TEFAF New York, boasting more than a 10% increase in attendance from the previous year’s edition. The fair’s tenth edition kicked off on Thursday, May 9, with an invite-only Preview Day, followed by a public opening on Friday, May 10. The nearly 90 international exhibitors, including nine new galleries, welcomed visitors with exceptional works on view from modern and contemporary art, antiquities, jewelry, and design objects. Collectors and private and institutional curators came prepared to buy, resulting in strong sales throughout the opening days.

ATTENDEES

Notable VIP guests included Nick Acquavella, Hamish Bowles, Zach Braff, Tory Burch, Anderson Cooper, Billy Cotton, Alexandra Daddario, Simon de Pury, Leonardo DiCaprio, Prince Dimitri of Yugoslavia, Anh Duong, Larry Gagosian, David Geffen, Audrey and Martin Gruss, Grace Gummer, Rachel Hovnanian, Tony Ingaro, KAWS, Marina Kellen French, David Kleinberg, Reed Krakoff, Aerin Lauder, Leonard Lauder, Adam Lindermann, Christine Mack, Michael McCarty, Carlos Mota, David Muir, Jamie Niven, Ashley Olsen, Harlan Peltz, James Reginato, Whitney Robinson, Renee Rockefeller, Mark Ronson, Jill Roosevelt, Aby Rosen, Beatriz Santo Domingo, Peter Som, Martha Stewart, Barbara Tober, Bruce E. Toll, Jane Toll, and Vera Wang.

Museum curators and over 50 museum directors were amongst the thousands of visitors welcomed on Preview Day, including Andrea Bayer (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), Colin B. Bailey (Morgan Library & Museum), Anne-Lise Desmas (Getty), Barbara Haskell (Whitney Museum of American Art), David Gasparotto (Getty), Guillaume Kientz (Hispanic Society Museum and Library), Helga Kessler Aurisch (Museum of Fine Arts Houston), Wendy Kaplan (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), Seth Pevnick (Cleveland Museum of Art), Salvador Salort-Pons (Detroit Institute of Arts), and Ian Wardropper (Frick Collection).

Over 60 museum patron and collector groups included the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Apollo Circle, MoMA, and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City; the Seattle Art Museum, Speed Art Museum, and J. Paul Getty Museum; and the American Friends of the Louvre, Musee d’Orsay, Pompidou, Palais de Tokyo, and the Tel Aviv Art Museum.

EARLY SALES

Within hours of the fair opening, sales reached the seven-figure mark. Almine Rech (Booth 322) placed a small Picasso painting for between $1.8-2 million and a work on paper by the artist for around $500,000. The gallery also sold paintings by Kenny Scharf (for between $180,000 and $200,000) and Brian Calvin (around $50,000) and a bronze sculpture by Claire Tabouret (around $100,000). Tina Kim Gallery (Booth 336) closed a deal on an early greyscale Park Seo-bo piece with an asking price of $1.5 million.

An interest in female artists was demonstrated by multiple sales on the VIP Preview Day and the first day of the fair. Commenting on the enthusiastic response to their solo presentation of works by Joan Snyder, Thaddeus Ropac (Booth 345) said, “[Snyder’s] important contribution to the field of American abstraction from the 1970s onwards is new to a number of collectors we've seen here, and to those who are familiar with her paintings, the presentation of her works on paper is providing greater insight into her practice and proving to be a real draw. While we have largely seen American collectors so far, we are delighted that the fair has been an opportunity to introduce Joan Snyder’s work to international collections, with Primary Fields going to an institution in Asia which will reach further new audiences.”’ All the works on view at the VIP Preview sold before the night’s end, including her two-part masterpiece Primary Fields, 2001, for $350,000; an oil on canvas Wall Garden, 2015, for $160,000; and six works on paper for between $15,000 and $40,000.

Offer Waterman (Booth 351), whose presentation highlighted three female British ceramicists, sold half of the works exhibited, including the largest piece ever created by Lucie Rie, for $100,000. Leon Tovar Gallery (366) sold more than fifteen works on paper by Emma Reyes, an inspiring Colombian artist recently featured at the Venice Biennale.

In the Armory’s period rooms, first-time TEFAF exhibitor The Page Gallery (Booth 104) sold multiple works by South Korean painter Choi Myoung Young, including Conditional Planes, 21-105, 2021, to the Mugrabi Family for $136,000 and Conditional Planes 22-601, 2022 to American financier Asher Edelman for $136,000. In ‘Company A’ room, Kasmin (Booth 201) sold Alma Allen’s stunning bronze dragonfly sculpture from 2022 for $65,000 to a collector on Preview Day. First-time exhibitor Venus Over Manhattan (Booth 103) sold a work by one of the Pacific’s most significant artists, Jon Pule, from Niue.

Reflective of the fair’s impressive scope of genre, works sold varied from antiquities to modern and contemporary. Charles Ede (Booth 356) sold nearly half a dozen pieces, including the rare Greek Black Glaze Kalpis, Athens, c.450-400 BC. White Cube (Booth 355) sold multiple pieces from its group presentation, including works by Antony Gormley, Robert Mapplethorpe, Julie Mehretu, and Ed Ruscha. Massimodecarlo (Booth 357) sold several pieces, including John McAllister’s lit late sudden-like summoning, 2024 and Salvo’s Senzo Titolo, 1991. Lisson (Booth 342) sold multiple works, including Anish Kapoor’s Brandy Wine, 2024, for $780,000 and Olga de Amaral’s Nébula 7, 2015, for $220,000. Sean Kelly Gallery (Booth 330) confirmed seven pieces on opening day, including a large-scale Alec Soth photograph from 2002 for $135,000 and Kehinde Wiley’s Aluel Mareng Study, 2023, for $100,000. Ben Brown Fine Arts (Booth 313) sold several works to American, European, and Asian collectors.

Modernist works, particularly with Surrealist connections, also did well. Di Donna Galleries (Booth 334) sold two works by Salvador Dali and works by Alexander Calder and Paul Klee, all to private collectors. David Tunick (Booth 371) sold a Chagall self portrait, Applicat-Prazan (Booth 339) sold Nicolas de Staël’s landscape Paysage de Provence, 1953, and Richard Green (Booth 324) placed Patrick Heron’s The Blue Table with Window, 1954, and Dame Barbara Hepworth DBE’s maquette for her large sculpture Four-square (Four circles) from 1966.

Design pieces were also well received. Carpenters Workshop Gallery (Booth 303) experienced strong sales across historic design and contemporary functional art collections. Sales from the opening hours of Preview Day included a Denúncia Sculptural Bench, crafted from Brazilian raw wood by celebrated designer Zanine Caldas, for $110,000.