VIPs streamed into the Park Avenue Armory for the opening of The European Fine Art Fair (Tefaf) New York on 8 May. Oyster shuckers roamed the halls and flower arrangements made up of purple alliums trembled, suspended in the air. Yet there are a surprising number of dark, almost oppressive works at the fair that seem to capture the current atmosphere.
At Sprüth Magers, the entire stand is dedicated to works by Anne Imhof, whose performance-art piece DOOM dominated headlines during its run at the Armory in March. Drawings, paintings and two bronze bas-relief works were included in the stand. In Untitled (2024), two despondent, almost indifferent figures hold hands as an atomic bomb detonates behind them. (The work sold on Thursday for €250,000 to a private US collection.) The 2024 Untitled (Cerberus series) drawings feature three-headed Dobermans, representing the hellhound guardian of the underworld, in tender contact with human figures.
“There is communion in the face of annihilation in her work,” Andreas Gegner, a senior director at Sprüth Magers, tells The Art Newspaper. “And while these works are not directly related to her performances, you can see the gestures that end up in her performances sketched out in these pieces.”
Another highlight is the highly relevant El Nuncio (1987) by Fernando Botero, shown at Leon Tovar Gallery, based out of New York and Bogotá. The piece depicts a pope in a red cap surrounded by other clerical figures.
“Botero painted his religious scenes with humour, but this work is concerned with his feeling of the overbearing presence of the church in his life,” a representative of the gallery says. The piece was made in reference to Botero’s childhood memories in his home city of Medellin. “One day, there was a procession for a pope who had recently died,” the gallery representative says, “and the streets were so full of mourners that no one could leave the house.” (As we spoke, white smoke was emerging from the Sistine Chapel, marking the successful conclusion of the conclave in Vatican City.)
Anne Imhof’s Untitled (2024) © Anne Imhof. Courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers. Photo: Genevieve Hanson
Similarly cheery in a tense, awful sort of way is Paula Rego’s The Bullfighter’s Godmother (1990-91), on view at Offer Waterman’s stand. A woman sends off her matador godson to a bullfight while a little girl sits by herself, eerily smiling into space. The work was produced just two years after the artist’s husband died. This loss is represented by an empty chair on which a trench coat is draped.
“Rego often explored themes of dominance and submission in her work,” says Emily Drablow, the director and head of research at Offer Waterman. “In this work, she is featuring a protective figure who is reinforcing gender stereotypes and a weird family dynamic. There is no love in this work.”
Bleaker still is a series of works by George Grosz on view at the Richard Nagy stand. Painted in the interwar period, they depicted Berlin’s citizens as they struggled with the fallout of one devastating war while anticipating another.
“The atmosphere was oppressive, the gap between the rich and the poor was widening and Grosz depicted that,” says Nina Hartl, director of Richard Nagy. Sex workers and destitute war veterans feature prominently in his ink-and-watercolour works.
Yet these incredible and psychologically heavy works made up just a small part of the fair. Beach scenes, diamonds and ancient artefacts dominated the floor—it is Tefaf, after all.
