Fair Report: The International Fine Print Dealers Association Annual Fair

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The 16th annual International Fine Print Dealers Association Print Fair was a crowded hall of eye candy, featuring 91 booths with exhibitors from around the world.

ArtInfo was there for two days of the fair’s four-day run (Nov. 2-5), and we discovered gems at every turn: Not only the expected (but still awe-inspiring) works from the likes of Warhol, Picasso, Miro and Johns, but also extremely pleasant surprises from lesser-known artists.

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The first of these unexpected delights were the macabre-yet-sweet screenprints, monoprints and woodcuts of Brazilian-born Ana Maria Pacheco on display at the Kent, U.K.-based Pratt Contemporary Art booth. The works, which appear to have slithered out of some dark fairytale, combine South American and European imagery, medieval and modern art, magic and reality. The three monoprints which make up the series “Comedia” were listed at $7,000 each.

But Pratt’s Peter Norton, who said it would be “a shame” to separate them, was willing to sell the complete trio for $18,000. “They’re very unique,” Norton said, adding that sales for Pacheco works were strong sellers at the fair (one collector was completing the purchase of a smaller piece as we arrived).

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The Los Angeles-based Mixografia booth had works we liked from Peter Wüthrich. The Swiss artist uses found books with linen covers to create pieces such as his “Short Stories” series, which Mixografia had on display. The series consists of multiple covers placed together behind a frame. “He has a very strong European resume,” gallery director Doug Roberts told us. “He has shown a little in this country, but he hasn’t really caught on yet here.”

Roberts said Wüthrich, who also works with video and installation, uses the books to “allow the observer to create their own language from what’s implied.” He added that interest in the pieces was high. “People walk right past all the other works we are showing [which included work from Mimmo Paladino, John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha and the last print Tom Wesselmann produced before he died], and they walk right up to [the Wüthrich pieces] and start asking questions. For us, his works are the hit of the fair.”

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Juffermans Fine Art was a first-time exhibitor at the fair, traveling all the way from the Netherlands to promote the artist Kees van Dongen (1877-1968). “He is well-known as a painter, but people don’t know he made a lot of graphic art as well,” gallery owner Jan Juffermans said. He was at the fair with son Jan Juffermans, Jr., with whom he spent eight years working on a recently completed book about van Dongen’s work. Juffermans said sales for the color lithographs were strong—strong enough to start planning a return trip. “We’re coming back to next year, I promise.”

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New Vik Muniz works were the attention-grabbers at the University of South Florida (Tampa)-based Graphicstudio. The set of four photogravures, “Auditions,” was listed at $16,000. Also drawing an occasional odd look at the booth was Roxy Paine’s oversized and unnervingly realistic hunk of lunch meat, Head Cheese (Small Slices), in pigment-cast epoxy resins.

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At the booth of Dorianne Hutton Fine Art gallery, the 1971 Christo lithograph, Whitney Museum of Art, Packed, drew our eye. “It’s not a print you see everyday,” owner Dorianne Hutton said of the string on fabric piece, adding that she’d plucked it off the wall of her own house to bring to the fair (it was listed at $16,000, but she didn’t seem eager to sell). The gallery also was offering work by Roy Lichtenstein, Ilya Bolotowsky, Warhol and David Hockney.

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Just some of the many, many sales reported (all prices indicate what works were listed at, not necessarily what they actually sold for): Stanley William Hayter’s Danae (engraving, soft-ground etching, scorper) for $2,800; and Thomas Nozkowski’s set of five untitled aquatint drypoint etchings for $6,000; both at the Philadelphia-based Dolan/Maxwell gallery… Elizabeth Murray’s 3-D assemblage on handpainted, carved foam, PICO from Sweetzer Suite (part of a series of 16 unique works), at Gemini G.E.L., for $20,000… Several prints of Wesselmann’s Sunset Nude with Yellow Tulips (edition of 75) at Mixografia, for $6,000.