The European Fine Art Foundation is returning to the Park Avenue Armory for the 10th edition of its New York fair this week, featuring modern and contemporary art as well as high-end jewelry and antiquities.
Most of the fair’s 90 exhibitors will be spread across the Armory’s Wade Thompson Drill Hall as well as the 16 historical rooms, making TEFAF the only fair that uses these spaces, says Hidde van Seggelen, the president of TEFAF’s executive committee.
“We use it as a backdrop for quite a few furniture dealers, those that we would like to show and experiment in these rooms,” van Seggelen says.
As for the more traditional dealer booths, he says they’re smaller in New York than at the main Maastricht, Netherlands, fair, which allows attendees both the opportunity to see each piece of art up close and in detail and a chance to connect with the dealers.
“It’s a very open fair. There’s incredible access to dealers, so if you want to learn about something, talk to the dealers,” van Seggelen says. “We are about exchange of knowledge.”
Each piece that the exhibitors bring to the fair is thoroughly vetted, ensuring the dealers only bring “the best of the best,” van Seggelen says.
One “rare and special” highlight for van Seggelen is L’Orpailleuse (The Sifter of Gold), 1945, by Yves Tanguy, which will be presented by New York-based Di Donna Galleries.
“This work has both a personal and art historical connection for me. I learned of this work from literature,” he says. “Similarly, TEFAF dealers work through a narrative, they tell stories and they bring artworks to life. Yves Tanguy was the least figurative Surrealist painter.”
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