Surrealism Reigns at Tefaf Art Fair

This is the one centesimal anniversary of the Surrealist manifesto, a doc written in France for a radical artwork motion whose resonance endures in our chaotic second on the tenth version of the Tefaf New York artwork honest. Throughout the Park Avenue Armory, among the many honest’s 89 exhibitors from 15 international locations, objects made through the heyday of Surrealism, from the Thirties to the Nineteen Fifties, pop up often. The ethos of Surrealism, which celebrated desires, nightmares, the unconscious thoughts and odd juxtapositions can be prevalent.

This is a little bit of a change for Tefaf, the grand previous artwork honest began in Maastricht, the Netherlands, which began off as a spot to purchase deaccessioned museum items and bona fide previous masters. The New York version focuses on trendy and modern artwork and even the handful of sellers right here specializing in antiquities, jewellery or design appear to have adopted the Surrealist theme. Here are a couple of amongst this very manageable honest with distinctive wares.

Leon Tovar (366)

Surrealism was particularly embraced in Latin America (though in all places, actually, because the Metropolitan Museum’s exhibition “Surrealism Beyond Borders,” which opened in late 2021, attested). Leon Tovar Gallery, which began in Bogotá earlier than shifting to New York somewhat over 20 years in the past, is showcasing a terrific portray by the Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo titled “Claustrofobia” (1954). The crimson, pink and orange canvas with a picket body that appears as if it’s been clawed as a lot as carved, highlights an insectoid determine banging round inside a geometrical armature. Tamayo labored on the archaeology museum in Mexico City, later absorbed into the National Museum of Anthropology, and was impressed by pre-Columbian artwork, however this portray additionally exhibits his affinity with Francis Bacon, whom Tamayo knew in Forties New York.

Another object with an impeccable Surrealist pedigree is over at Jacques Lacoste, which is displaying French design from the Thirties. Here is a smooth, peach-hued couch conceived by the wunderkind Salvador Dalí and executed by the designer Jean-Michel Frank that mimics the lips of the saucy actress Mae West. The couch was a part of a set commissioned by a baron with the concept that the house was a type of stage or theatrical set. (Frank was the one architect included in a landmark 1936 exhibition of Surrealism on the Museum of Modern Art in New York, organized by the museum’s first director, Alfred Barr.)

Osborne Samuel (360) and Thaddaeus Ropac (345)

The work of feminine artists is one other thread operating by the honest, and Osborne Samuel has a number of sculptures by the British artist Barbara Hepworth (in addition to the ethnographic-influenced sculptures of Lynn Chadwick, a male artist), whereas Thaddaeus Ropac has a solo presentation of the American painter Joan Snyder. Hepworth’s sensuous sculptures — which are sometimes in comparison with Henry Moore’s — had been contemporaneous with the Surrealist increase within the Thirties and a style for summary biomorphic kind, whereas Chadwick leaned into angular varieties culled partly from his architectural coaching. Snyder is a recent American grasp whose summary work embody natural supplies like flowers and vegetation. The arresting presentation at Ropac consists of a number of a long time of portray and rawer works on paper.

Odd juxtapositions had been a standby in Surrealism: The creator Lautréamont’s unsettling quip a few “probability assembly of a stitching machine and an umbrella on a dissecting desk” served as a highway map for a lot of artists. Zwirner follows this logic, pairing the beloved Italian still-life painter Giorgio Morandi with the lauded Mississippi pottery grasp George Ohr, often known as the “Mad Potter of Biloxi,” who died in 1918. Morandi specialised in muted nonetheless life work with a spare array of vessels and Ohr made unusually formed vessels that seemed forward to summary expressionism. Meanwhile, over at Di Donna are two work from the Forties by Yves Tanguy, who was a part of the Nineteen Twenties Surrealist circle in Paris (though, by this time residing in Connecticut along with his second spouse, the Surrealist poet and artist Kay Sage). Tanguy’s eerie, uneasy work — stark and stuffed of their decrease registers with bulbous, spiky varieties — illustrate each that battle-weary second and, in fact, our personal.

TEFAF New York Art Fair
Opens Thursday by invitation. Friday-Tuesday, May 10-14, at Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue at 67th Street, in Manhattan; tefaf.com. $55 for at some point single entry; $25 for college kids.