Arts & Entertainment

Art collectors descend on New York with money to spend

By Nora Quintanilla

New York, May 11 (EFE).- The art market’s spring sales season got under way here Thursday with a preview of the eighth edition of TEFAF New York.

People lucky enough to get an invitation from The European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF) were plied with champagne and oysters while viewing the works on offer at the Park Avenue Armory a day before the official opening.

The consensus among owners of the nearly 100 participating galleries was that despite economic uncertainty, demand for quality art remains strong.

A similar message was heard this week from executives at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, whose spring sales are projected to bring in as much as $2.2 billion.

TEFAF New York is “livelier this year than last year,” Eduard Mayoral, director of Spain’s Mayoral gallery, told EFE, adding that “all the collectors” are here.

Mayoral has come to New York with a selection of pieces from Marc Chagall (a painting with an estimated price tag of 4 million euros) and Pablo Picasso (a drawing valued at 1 million euros), as well as works by Salvador Dali and Joan Miro.

While “Good Neighbors,” a table created by sculptor Wendell Castle, is expected to command a price of around $800,000, according to Erica Boginsky of the Friedman Benda gallery.

Some galleries are putting all their chips on a single artist.

That is the case with Pace, which is offering a selection of works by pioneering sculptor Louise Nevelson.

Leon Tovar’s gallery has assembled a collecting of pieces by “women artists who weren’t successful in their own countries” and emigrated to Latin America, such as Gego, Tecla Tofano, and Remedios Varo.

“There are very many museums that are coming especially to purchase this kind of difficult to obtain material,” Tovar said, pointing to a “pro-woman international tendency” among art institutions.

The Templon gallery is highlighting black artists who for years “were not given space” in the market, including Michael Ray Charles’s “(FOREVER FREE) HELLO I’M YOUR NEW NEIGHBOR,” with a price tag of $140,000. EFE

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