Select Crowd

Courtesy Mary-Anne Martin Fine Art, New York

Gunther Gerszo’s self-portrait, from Mary-Anne Martin Fine Art

February 2009 Datebook

Cezanne Central

It's Universal

Once a Decade

Hals Mark

All That Glitters

Signature Lincoln

Sheer Surrealism

Willem de Kooning Vito Acconci Allen Ruppersberg Nicolas de Stael SFMOMA Considers Unusual Expansion Plan Warhols Send Sotheby’s Soaring New York Sales Preview Healthy Results at Christie's Prints and Multiples Sale

Send a letter to the Editor

Save to Del.icio.us Digg this

Even the challenging economic climate, though, can’t tarnish true masterpieces. "People are really bringing first-rate material," says the ADAA executive director Linda Blumberg. New York’s Acquavella Galleries, for instance, is offering League, a 1964 oil on newsprint mounted on board by Willem de Kooning that has been in the same collection since 1965, and a highly abstracted still life painted in 1952 by Nicolas de Staël. Hirschl & Adler has the Joseph Stella painting Fountain, priced in the high six figures, while fellow Manhattan gallerist Mary-Anne Martin plans to devote one section of her booth to the Surrealist years of the Mexican painter Gunther Gerszo, a highlight of which is a 1945 self-portrait — one of the few that Gerszo made — priced at $250,000.

As in recent years, much of the excitement surrounds contemporary work. The first-time exhibitor James Cohan Gallery, also of New York, is staging an ambitious group show titled "Body as Prop," in which Vito Acconci’s large, reflective metal sculpture Stretched Façade, 1984, priced at $225,000, is impossible to miss. Visitors at the Los Angeles dealer Margo Leavin’s booth must peer down to see the less-conspicuous You and Me, 1990, a floor piece by Alan Ruppersberg made from linoleum tiles printed with text.

The fair also features some standout solo shows. Among them are exhibits at the Manhattan dealers Friedrich Petzel and Tibor de Nagy of, respectively, new paintings by the British-born Nicola Tyson, known for her highly abstracted figures, and the late Larry Rivers’s 1950s and ’60s works on paper. "Select Crowd" originally appeared in the February 2009 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's February 2009 Table of Contents.