2023/01/25

Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life @ TATE

Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life @ TATE

Runs until 1st of May 2023

 

Barbara Hepworth Disc with Strings (Moon) 1969  © Bowness

Barbara Hepworth is one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century. She was at the forefront of international modern art, deeply spiritual, and passionately engaged with political and technological change. Born in Wakefield, Yorkshire, she moved to St Ives in 1939, where she lived and worked for the rest of her life. Her works reveal a singular vision of art and life, integrating her interests in music, dance, science, space exploration, politics, and religion, with personal events and experiences.

This exhibition presents almost five decades of her sculptures, paintings, drawings, prints and designs. Hepworth expanded the possibilities for sculpture and art’s purpose within modern society. Working in both abstraction and figuration, much of her art expresses our relationships with each other and our surroundings, and how art can reflect and alter our perceptions of the world. Hepworth considered St Ives her ‘spiritual home’. Her former residence and workspace in the town, Trewyn Studio, is now the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden. Hepworth’s works – from drawings to monuments – are treasured in public and private collections and civic spaces worldwide. Celebrating her extraordinary life and achievements, Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life is organised by The Hepworth Wakefield in collaboration with the National Galleries of Scotland (Edinburgh) and Tate St Ives.

Tate St Ives
Porthmeor Beach
St Ives
Cornwall TR26 1TG

Bosch - one another Renaissance >> Milano, Italy

Bosch - one another Renaissance >> Milano, Italy

Until 12 /03/2023

For the first time, the city of Milan, under the artistic direction of Palazzo Reale and Castello Sforzesco, pays tribute to the great Flemish genius and to his success in southern Europe, with a brand new exhibition project revolving around a fascinating thesis: Bosch is the emblem of an “alternative” Renaissance, which is far from the Renaissance governed by the myth of classicism and is evidence of the existence of a plurality of Renaissances, with its art centres scattered throughout Europe.

 

Jheronymus Bosch, Trittico delle Tentazioni di sant’Antonio, 1500 circa, Olio su tavola, Lisbona, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga © DGPC/Luísa Oliveira


Jheronimus Bosch (1453 - 1516) is known worldwide for his language, made of dreamlike visions and peculiar worlds, fires, monstrous creatures, and fantastic figures.

Open to the public until March 12th, 2023, the exhibition “Bosch and Another Renaissance” is promoted by the Municipality of Milan - Culture, Palazzo Reale and Castello Sforzesco, organized by 24 ORE Cultura-Gruppo 24 ORE and  curated by Bernard Aikema, previously a professor of Modern Art History at the University of Verona, Fernando Checa Cremades, professor of Art History at the Complutense University of Madrid and former director of the Prado Museum and Claudio Salsi, the director of Castello Sforzesco, the Archaeological and Historical Museums and professor of history of engraving at the Catholic University of Milan.

The exhibition itinerary encompasses a hundred works of art including paintings, sculptures, tapestries, engravings, bronzes, and ancient volumes, including some 30 rare and precious objects from wunderkammerns.

In this extremely rich corpus, the visitor will find some of Bosch's most celebrated masterpieces and works inspired by the Master's subjects, which had never before been displayed together in a single exhibition. In fact, Bosch is the author of very few works universally attributed to him, which are preserved in museums all around the world. Precisely because they are so rare and precious, this artist's masterpieces rarely leave the museums and even more rarely do we have the opportunity to see them together in a single exhibition. Due to their fragility and peculiar state of preservation, some works will have to be returned to their museum locations before the exhibition closes. These are the works from the Museo Làzaro Galdiano in Madrid and the two works borrowed from the Uffizi Galleries.

 

The exhibition at Palazzo Reale is not a conventional monograph one: it creates a dialogue between masterpieces traditionally attributed to the Master and important works by other Flemish, Italian, and Spanish masters, thus favouring a comparison aimed at explaining the visitor to which extent the “other” Renaissance - not just the Italian one and not just Bosch - would influence great artists such as Titian, Raphael, Gerolamo Savoldo, Dosso Dossi, El Greco and many others, in the same years or immediately after.

 

The result of a five-year research effort and the joint work of an unprecedented international cultural cooperation network including governments, embassies, museums, cultural institutes and collectors, was a unique exhibition in terms of the narrative power of an entire artistic era and the importance and diversity of the comparisons suggested by the exhibition.

Thanks to the collaboration between Italian institutions, in particular the Italian Embassy in Portugal and also the Italian Cultural Institute in Lisbon with the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, the monumental Triptych of the Temptations of St. Anthony - a work that has left Portugal only a couple of times during the 20th century and is now coming to Italy for the first time - will be displayed at Palazzo Reale. The Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon, in its turn, borrowed “our” Pala Trivulzio (also known as Madonna in Glory and Saints) by Andrea Mantegna, which is part of the Castello Sforzesco's Art Collections.

Another important loan, the result of an exchange with the city of Bruges, is the Master's monumental work from the Groeningemuseum in Bruges, the Triptych of the Last Judgment, which was originally part of the collection of Venetian Cardinal Marino Grimani.

The work by Bosch borrowed from the Prado Museum, The Temptations of St. Anthony, and the masterpiece borrowed from the Museo Lázaro Galdiano, i.e. the Master's valuable panel painting St. John the Baptist, are of paramount importance for the exhibition project. Also by Bosch is the Triptych of the Hermits from the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, the collection of Cardinal Domenico Grimani, one of the most important collectors of his time and among the very few owners of Bosch's works in Italy.

THE THESIS OF THE EXHIBITION

Strange as it may sound, Bosch's fame did not begin in Flanders, where the artist was born, but in southern Europe. In fact, the “Bosch phenomenon” originated in the Mediterranean world, specifically in 16th-century Spain and Italy.

At that time, however, Renaissance classicism dominated in Italy. But it is precisely here that the fantastic and dreamlike language of Bosch and his followers, the protagonists of “another Renaissance”, would find the most fertile and mature ground, where they could grow and become a figurative and cultural model for their era and for many of the subsequent generations of artists, even centuries later.

In particular, the visitor may enjoy a comparison between the four tapestries by Bosch from the Escorial and a cartoon for the fifth tapestry - which unfortunately got lost - identified in the collections of the Uffizi Galleries.

In this regard, it is worth noting the immense importance of tapestry in sixteenth-century European culture, in artistic and economic terms: indeed, tapestry was a veritable status symbol of the elite. That is why being able to admire the entire cycle of Bosch’s tapestries is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, made possible by the loans from the Escorial and the Gallerie degli Uffizi: in fact, the four tapestries from the Escorial have never been exhibited together outside the museum, and the comparison with the Elephant cartoon, preparing the fifth tapestry in the series - now lost - is totally unprecedented.

This itinerary aims at illustrating the resounding success of Jheronimus Bosch's artistic language in southern Europe, and even overseas, in the period between the sixteenth century and the early seventeenth century, with particular reference to the collecting trends of the time, especially in Italy and Spain.

Thus, in Venice, Bosch's expressive uniqueness was readily grasped by one of the greatest collectors of the time, the man of letters and Cardinal Domenico Grimani. It is thanks to his far-sighted taste and the Grimani collection, housed in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, that today Italy hosts as many as three works by Bosch, including the Triptych of the Hermits, now on display in the rooms of Palazzo Reale.

The same can be said of Spain, where, from the 16th century until today, most of Bosch's major works can be found between the Prado Museum and the Escorial Monastery. It is no coincidence that Spanish authors are the first and most engaged critics of Bosch.

This was the geographical and cultural area where the works of the artist and his followers were especially in demand. In this regard, we could argue that Bosch’s language, in the decades following the Master's death, was at the heart of an unprecedented European entrepreneurial operation.

In fact, the fortune of Bosch’s language is at the origin of a veritable “Alternative Renaissance”, which is not much recognized, even in specialized literature.

Why does the exhibition also suggest comparisons?

The “fashion” for “Bosch-style” imagery, which became established in Spain and Italy and, later, in the rest of Europe, was reflected in a series of spectacular works of art, made using various techniques and drawing from a variety of sources, among which the stunning cycle of the four tapestries of the Escorial and the elephant tapestry by the French painter Antoine Caron stand out.

All of these works attest to the spreading in the Mediterranean region of visionary and dreamlike motifs inspired by the Flemish artist's imagery.

These creations, in turn, inspired a large number of prominent painters and engravers. Especially the prints that contributed to the dissemination of Bosch’s language, among which the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Bosch's most important follower) stands out and is featured in the exhibition with a dozen engravings inspired by his compositions.

The engravings contributed greatly to disseminating a taste for images of nocturnal fires, scenes of witchcraft, and dreamlike and magical visions. This is confirmed by works such as Marcantonio Raimondi's or Agostino Veneziano’s Stregozzo, Albrecht Dürer 's Sea Monster, Aldo Manuzio's literary-editorial masterpiece, Francesco Colonna's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, and, finally, the Allegory of human life by Giorgio Ghisi.

The proliferation of rare, bizarre, and precious objects that characterizes the fashion of the eclectic collections typical of 16th-century international taste is evoked in the last room, set up as an original Wunderkammer, thanks to the collaboration of the Milan Museum of Natural History and the Castello Sforzesco Collections. The studied and calculated presence of some thirty “chamber of wonder” objects brings about immediate and direct comparison with the chaotic and unrealistic representation of one of Bosch's most challenging masterpieces: The Garden of Delights, featured in the exhibition in the dual version of a coeval painting and a tapestry.

The Wunderkammern of the last Habsburg rulers were extremely famous, especially the one of Rudolf II of Habsburg, whose portrait, the famous Vertumno painted by Milanese artist Arcimboldo (an exceptional loan from the Skokloster Castle, Sweden), is featured in the exhibition within the reproduced wunderkammer, and fully represents the eclecticism typical of this collecting taste.

BOSCH'S “VISIONS”

Magic and dreaming, with their unpredictable nature, not dominated by rationality, seem to be the outcome of a “see-though” vision of everyday reality, which reveals the anxieties, obsessions, and contradictory nature of man and society. This is the expression of the prevailing cultural climate on the eve of two momentous turning points: first the Reformation, then the Counter-Reformation.

These figurative categories are also an opportunity to investigate the depths of the inner world and its inconsistencies and reflect upon them; they were appreciated among educated and curious cultural circles and, in general, among a public who was not unfamiliar with markedly moral intentions.

Bosch's religious and secular compositions are also dominated by the concept of the complexity of reality, which in its extremes is populated with decomposed figures, paradoxical and illogical situations, deconstructed, monstrous, and cruel beings, but also with the purest figures of naked youths populating the earth without modesty: in short, a world turned upside down. In this universe, temptation and error are always lurking, ready to ruin man. The sixteenth-century man was aware that works of art carried symbolic messages that had to be interpreted in an educational and formative sense, and we think that, against this background, they especially welcomed and appreciated these subjects.

The so-called 'world of grotesques' is the other side of the same coin when speaking of the fantastic in Bosch.

In fact, the fashion for “Bosch-style” art can be connected back to an already established interest in “monstrosities” and the “grotesque”, which appeared - together with its disruptive effects - at the end of the 15th century in Tuscany and northern Italy, in paintings, drawings, engravings, and bronzes of excellent workmanship and great imagination (Bernardo Parentino, Severo da Ravenna, Marcantonio Raimondi, Giorgio Ghisi). Moreover, it can also be found in the fashion for old-fashioned grotesques, which spread in early 16th century Italy, Spain, and France.

The itinerary ends with an audio-visual work, Tríptiko. A vision inspired by Hieronymus Bosch, a journey through the Flemish painter's dream world, imagined by the artists of Karmachina. The title recalls the format of the main work having inspired the show: the Triptych of the Garden of Delights. The show includes both more figurative moments, where the reference to Bosch's panels is most evident, and more abstract ones, which freely evoke the visionary and “lysergic” nature of the master's work. The paintings are brought to life through the use of the most innovative technologies: Bosch’s painting is reworked through digital animation techniques thus participating in the construction of an immersive, evocative, and bewitching narrative.

BRAFA 2023 Brussels

 BRAFA 2023 BRUSSELS  29|01- 05|02| 2023

 


View of BRAFA 22 © Fabrice Debatty


BRAFA Art Fair | 29|01 -05|02|2-23| BRUSSELS

Walking around BRAFA is like diving into a world where beauty and elegance impart a form of
appeasement. Collectors and art lovers will soon be able to rediscover this special atmosphere, since the 68th edition of the Fair will be taking place in exactly two months. 

From Sunday, January 29th to Sunday, February 5th, 2023, BRAFA will be taking up residence at Brussels Expo.Over the course of 8 days, more than 10,000 works spanning all different styles and periods will be presented by 130 internationally-renowned galleries from 15 countries. For two days prior to the opening of the Fair, the paintings, furniture, art objects, jewellery and sculptures will be analysed by more than 80 experts from around the world, studied by a scientific laboratory and monitored by the Art Loss Register.
Over time, BRAFA has built up a reputation that is now well established thanks to its pursuit of
excellence and the eclecticism of the objects on display, allowing collectors to broaden their tastes and purchase with complete confidence. “It is not by chance that from the outset, BRAFA has resolutely opted for excellence and eclecticism! Diversity and high standards are essential impulses that drive any healthy and dynamic society, simultaneously living up to its core values and projecting itself into the future in a visionary way. BRAFA is a microcosm that reflects this approach in a world where technology transcends matter, thereby accessing a sphere that showcases the richness of an artistic heritage with a thousand nuances. This is why BRAFA is a reliable and credible guide which, from year to year, takes you on a journey through the mysterious, sometimes ill-defined but always fascinating forest which we call the world of art.” Christian Vrouyr, Secretary-General of BRAFA.
From the Old Masters to contemporary art, by way of jewellery, sculptures, silverware, design and tribal art, here is an overview of a few key pieces which will be featured at BRAFA 2023.

 

 

McArthur Binion Visual:Ear / Paper:Work @ Xavier Hufkens, Brussels

McArthur Binion Visual:Ear / Paper:Work

@ Xavier Hufkens, Brussels

 until Van Eyck & Rivoli

 

 For his debut solo exhibition with the gallery, McArthur Binion (b. 1946, Macon, Mississippi), presents a new body of work created in Chicago, where he primarily lives and works. Large format oil-stick paintings are assembled in the Van Eyck gallery under the title Visual:Ear, a reference to Binion’s abiding interest in the visual translation of music into colour and form. Paper:Work, on show in the Rivoli gallery, presents a corpus of recent drawings. The exhibition provides a comprehensive overview of the artist’s oeuvre across a wide range of scales and showcase the latest developments in his decades-long practice.The paintings in Visual:Ear draw a decisive loop in Binion’s work and hark back to an idea that first crystalised over fifty years ago, while he was studying for his MFA in painting at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Deeply immersed in music, especially jazz, Binion became fascinated by non-verbal means of communicating his experiences. His earliest work on the theme was Drawn Symphony:in:Sane Minor (1971), a hand-drawn image atop ten pages of musical manuscript paper. The term ‘visual ear’ also dates from this period, with Binion first using it in his 1973 graduate thesis. These works — which represent Binion’s earliest attempts to convey the rhythms and sensations of music in words and images — remained dormant in his mind, but nonetheless present, until they were reactivated and visualised for his on-going series of Visual:Ear paintings. The works make use of an abstracted, collaged image of a musical score, Still Standing Stuttering, by Pulitzer prize-winning composer Henry Threadgill (b. 1944), which Binion personally commissioned as a response to his painting Stuttering:Standing:Still (2013). The images in Visual:Ear are made up of varied compositions of Still Standing Stuttering. The inclusion of the printed music represents an unprecedented opening up of the oeuvre to external influences. Prior, Binion had almost exclusively used autobiographical source material in his work, most famously pages from his address book or passport, photos of his childhood home, his hands, or historical images pertaining to his early life in rural Mississippi. Working with the music score images was the catalyst for a quatre mains of sorts, one that resulted in what Binion calls the ‘under conscious’ of the work. The Visual: Ear paintings are a “handmade, geometric way to insert the music score into the work.”

The ‘under conscious’ — whether autobiographical or music related — is a hall-mark of Binion’s work and is usually composed of printed material. On top of this, the artist adds a heavy layer of paint-stick marks. The visual language is that of minimalism and abstraction: lines, serial patterns and geometric shapes. To borrow a musical term, the works have a binary form, with the two elements ultimately merging into an indivisible whole. This interweaving, which lies at the core of Binion’s practice, creates multiple fields of tension: between the personal and impersonal, between mech-anical reproduction and slow, labour-intensive mark-making, and between the revealment and concealment of the ‘under conscious’. The works not only testify to Binion’s sustained interest in music but also his belief in learning to look by listening, and likewise, to listen by looking. As he himself states, the works in the Visual:Ear series represent “the clarification of [his] character as a painter.”

 44 rue Van Eyck & 107 rue St-Georges, 1050 Brussels, Belgium
www.xavierhufkens.com

2022/11/20

Curatorial residency program in Linz,Austria, OPEN CALL

 Curatorial residency program in Linz,Austria, OPEN CALL

 Deadline is February 17.
The Arts Council Korea and Ars Electronica implement an onsite curatorial residency program that invites upcoming curators and cultural producers to spend four months in Linz to learn about the vision, philosophy, and practice of Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria).

2022/10/14

Xavier Hufkens Gallery: Giorgio Griffa | Luce buio, Brussels, Belgium

Giorgio Griffa | Luce buio
23|09 -  5 |11| 2022

Xavier Hufkens Gallery, Brussels, Belgium

 Xavier Hufkens is delighted to announce Luce buio, the gallery’s inaugural exhibition dedicated to the work of Italian abstract artist Giorgio Griffa (b.1936, Turin). From his early linear paintings of the mid-1960s to recent works from 2022, this presentation showcases all five decades of the artist’s career and highlights both the evolutions and constancies within an oeuvre that is
as eclectic as it is poetic.

 



Giorgio Griffa is primarily known for his painted canvases that are nailed directly to the wall — unprimed, unframed and unstretched — the majority of which are executed in a luminous palette of desaturated colours. The canvases are folded when not exhibited, which creates visible creases that become a vital part of the work. At first glance, it is hard to differentiate the paintings of fifty years ago with those made recently. A closer study of the oeuvre,however, reveals the existence of eleven major cycles, ranging from the Segni primari [primary marks] series of 1967 to the latest Dilemma paintings. Each corpus has a start date, but not an end. Furthermore, certain works belong to
more than one cycle, as different creative trajectories intersect and merge into each other. As the artist himself asserts, the cycles co-exist side by side, being neither stages of progress nor regression, but simply continuous variations of ‘becoming’. This latter word is crucial to understanding the oeuvre, for Griffa’s sequences of lines, patterns, letters and numbers are not just universal but also open-ended. Each work contains an element that could, in principle,
be continued indefinitely. Once the pattern is set, so to speak, we visually and mentally expect it to continue. When it doesn’t — and there is always a point at which a line, phrase or pattern seems to arbitrarily stop — we anticipate its prolongation, almost completing the sequence in our mind’s eye. Linguistically, it is analogous to stopping mid-sentence, leaving the interlocuter (in this case
the viewer) to pick up the train of thought. This makes the empty spaces in the works as important as the graphic elements themselves. What we see in Griffa’s canvases are analogous to small excerpts from potentially infinite patterns, just as the here and now is but one juncture in a far greater continuum.

 



Giorgio Griffa is both a painter and a lawyer. Until he retired from his legal practice, he devoted himself to his twin professions, a combination which takes us back to the renaissance ideal of ‘universal knowledge’. Related to this are the so-called seven liberal arts, which are divided into those of the word (grammar, logic and rhetoric; the trivium) and those of numbers (arithmetic,
music, astronomy and geometry; the quadrivium). As profoundly interconnected mechanisms for understanding nature and humanity, and as media for change and renewal, these disciplines were regarded as the components of a single encompassing ‘art’: the foundation of all learning. This once indivisible link between the realm of words and that of numbers runs like a leitmotif through
the various cycles in Griffa’s oeuvre, as seen in the distinct bodies of work depicting letters, phrases and quotes, and those departing from numerical principles, the Fibonacci sequence or the golden ratio, also known as the ‘irrational number’. Key to translating the ideas that spring from these inspiration sources, and countless other musical, historical and philosophical starting points both ancient and modern, is Griffa’s characteristically simple visual language involving archetypal signs: letters, numbers and lines. Nothing more, nothing less. Griffa does not paint what he sees, therefore, but what he thinks or, more specifically, what he knows. As he himself once said, “I do not represent anything, I paint.” This act of painting — using the lightest of all touches and ultra-fluid acrylic pigments — is thus a means of transmission, a way of articulating a deeply humanistic worldview that it is connected to every other field of knowledge. By conflating two passages from Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot, whom Griffa has long admired, we get close to the ideas embodied
in the work: “For the pattern is new in every moment / And every moment is a new and shocking / Valuation of all we have been [...] And so each venture / Is a new beginning.”


 

Giorgio Griffa (b. 1936, Turin; lives and works in Turin) initially completed a law degree in 1958 and became a practising lawyer. From 1960 to 1963, he learned how to paint by assisting the Italian painter Filippo Scroppo (1910-1993). Despite early associations with movements such as Arte Povera, pittura analitica [fundamental painting] and Minimalism, his work has always stood outside the mainstream currents in contemporary art. Giorgio Griffa participated in important international exhibitions such as Prospekt, Düsseldorf (1969 and 1974) and the Venice Biennale (1978, 1980 and in 2017) as well as Processes of Visualized Thought: Young Italian Avant-garde, Kunstmuseum Luzern (1970) and A Painting Exhibition of Painters who Place Painting in Question, curated by Michel Claura, Stadtische Museum, Monchengladbach (1973). Recent solo presentations of Giorgio Griffa’s works include Uno and Due, Galleria Civica d’Art Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin (2002), Neuer Kunstverein, Aschaffenburg (2005), MACRO, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rome (2011), Golden Ratio, Mies van der Rohe Haus, Berlin (2013); A Continuous Becoming, Camden Art Centre, London (2018); Tutti i pensieri di tutti, Palazzo Collicola, Spoleto (2020-21); Marvels of the Unknown, LaM - Lille Métropole Musée d’art moderne, Villeneuve-d’Ascq (2021); La Recherche, Centre Pompidou (2022).

 44 rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium
www.xavierhufkens.com + 32(0)2 639 67 30

 

BRAFA ART FAIR | BRUSSELES | BELGIUM

BRAFA ART FAIR 

BRUSSELS , BELGIUM

Sunday, January 29th to Sunday, February 5th  2023 | Brussels Expo

 

BRAFA Art Fair is back in January and stands as the first major art fair of the year in the calendar. The 68th edition of BRAFA will take place from Sunday, January 29th to Sunday, February 5th at Brussels Expo at the Heysel in Halls 3 and 4, where 130 exhibitors will be taking over the entire space.

 

 
BRAFA will be the first major European art fair to visit in 2023, positioning it, as per tradition, as a true barometer of the art market. The 68th edition of BRAFA will take place from Sunday, January 29th to Sunday, February 5th at Brussels Expo at the Heysel in Halls 3 and 4, where 130 exhibitors will be taking over the entire space. This venue, the new setting for BRAFA since June, was greatly
appreciated by its visitors at the last event, both for the openness of its aisles and for the very pleasant atmosphere that reigned there.

Harold t’Kint de Roodenbeke, the Chairman of BRAFA, explains: We had a kind of trial gallop with a first BRAFA outside of our usual standards, since we proposed an event in a new space and at a different time due to a disrupted schedule. January will therefore be both a return to normality in terms of dates and also the writing of a new page in our history with Brussels Expo. Our current goal is to get back to our rhythm and our loyal customers, whilst developing the potential of the space.

For this 2023 edition, a theme has been chosen in correlation with the initiative of the Brussels-Capital Region, which will make 2023 a year devoted to Art Nouveau. BRAFA will be highlighting this movement in several ways. The King Baudouin Foundation and some galleries specialised in this field
will be presenting exceptional Art nouveau pieces. The creation of the BRAFA 2023 carpet will be based on original drawings by Victor Horta, and art lovers will be able to attend two BRAFA Art
 

Talks devoted to Art nouveau.

One will be led by Professor Werner Adriaenssens, Curator of the Twentieth-Century Collections at the Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, and the other by Benjamin Zurstrassen, Curator at the Horta Museum.


BRAFA’s 2023 edition will see the return of several galleries

The Fair strengthens the development of its international reputation through the quality and diversity of its galleries. Of the 130 exhibitors, 65% are based abroad. Christian Vrouyr, the General Secretary of BRAFA, says: For over sixty years, BRAFA has stimulated the development of participating galleries, first at the national level, and then on the international scene. The Fair, which
began as a local event, has been able to find the right tone over the years, making it possible to extend contacts with international customers.”

For this 68th edition, a number of galleries have confirmed their return, including the Galerie de la Présidence (FR), which will be presenting a selection of masters from the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries such as Buffet, Derain, Dufy, Giacometti, Maillol, Matisse, Poliakoff, Vlaminck and Vuillard.

Collectors who have already visited BRAFA will also recognise the Galerie von Vertes (CH), specialised in modern and contemporary art, which will be offering exceptional pieces by Albers, Calder, Chamberlain, Francis, Kusama, Lichtenstein, Miro, Poliakoff, Richter, Relief, Warhol and Wesselman.

Also worth mentioning is the presence of Morentz (NL), a gallery specialised in twentieth-century design furniture, which brings together works from all over the world and showcases designers such as George Nakashima, Phillip Lloyd Powell, José Zanine Caldas, and Gio Ponti.Included in the 2023 list of participants, the Osborne Samuel Gallery (UK), one of the leading specialists in modern British paintings and sculptures in London, is particularly focused on the works
of Henry Moore, Lynn Chadwick and Barbara Hepworth, and the school of London painters such as
Auerbach and Kossoff; abstract post-war artists such as Pasmore, Heath and Frost, and the neo-romanticists Sutherland, Vaughan, Craxton and Clough.The Bernier/Eliades Gallery (GR/BE), based in Athens and Brussels, specialises in contemporary art(Arte Povera, Minimalism, Land Art, Conceptual Art). It will be presenting works by Susan Rothenberg and Berta Fischer to visitors at the Fair.Finally, three Belgian galleries, whose reach extends far beyond national borders, will be returning to BRAFA in 2023: Guy Pieters Gallery (BE), whose success is based on its long-standing collaborationswith artists (the one developed with Christo recently enabled the wrapping of the Arc de Triomphe inParis). De Brock Gallery (BE), founded in 1991, promoting established contemporary artists such as Imi Knoebel, Julian Opie, Dan Walsh and Terry Winters, with an emphasis on abstract painting.Bernard De Leye, specialised in antique silverware, is one of the finest connoisseurs in this field. He has been in the profession since 1977 and presents unique pieces of European silverware, mainly Belgian and French, from the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

9 new galleries will be joining BRAFA
Two galleries specialised in ancient art will be making their entrance at BRAFA. Franck Anelli Fine Art (FR) will be presenting ancient Flemish, Dutch and French paintings from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, as well as rare inlaid furniture from the golden period of the Parisian eighteenth century. Ars Antiqua, based in Milan, will be exhibiting ancient paintings, furniture and sculptures.

Another newcomer is Van der Meij Fine Arts (NL), a specialist in nineteenth-century European art.Their collection ranges from Northern European Romanticism, with works by J.C. Dahl, Thomas Fearnley, Skovgaard and Peder Balke, to Scandinavian Symbolism (Hammershøi, Ilsted, Holsøe, L.A.
Ring), by way of Dutch painting (e.a. Jan Weissenbruch and Willem Witsen).

The design furniture section has been expanded with the addition of three new galleries, including the Galerie Pascal Cuisinier (FR), specialised in French design between 1951 and 1961, which represents Pierre Guariche, Joseph-André Motte, Michel Mortier, Antoine Philippon & Jacqueline Lecoq, amongst others. Galerie Van den Bruinhorst (NL) will offer historic art and design objects
from the twentieth century. The collection contains remarkable objects that played an important role in art and design at the time they were created. New Hope Gallery, from Belgium, will present a set of masterpieces from the history of furniture in the second half of the twentieth century, including works by American and Danish designers such as Paul Evans and Phillip Lloyd Powell, Poul
Henningsen, Poul Kjærholm, and Finn Juhl.
VKD Jewels (NL) will be joining the jewellery section of the fair. The gallery, located in Uden in the
Netherlands, has a collection which includes a unique range of fine and rare jewellery from the world’s leading designers from the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries such as Van Cleef & Arpels, Cartier, Bulgari, Buccellati, Tiffany and David Webb.
Also amongst the new exhibitors, collectors will be able to discover the Parisian gallery Nicolas Bourriaud (FR), specialised in nineteenth and early-twentieth century French sculpture, which will be exhibiting the works of the greatest sculptors such as Barye, Joseph Bernard, Bugatti, Dalou, Guyot,
Rodin, Pompon and Sandoz. Finally, the Librairie Amélie Sourget (FR) will join the specialists in rare and precious books in the fields of the history of ideas, travelogues and beautiful illustrated books.

Organised by the Foire des Antiquaires de Belgique asbl
Bureaux Royal Depot

Avenue du Port 86 C boîte 2A I BE-1000 Brussels

t. +32 (0)2 513 48 31

www.brafa.art