Works by Dürer, Hockney, and Warhol lead sales at IFPDA Fine Art Print Fair Online

Art Daily
Published on
Andy Warhol, Details of Renaissance Paintings, Sandro Botticelli, Birth of Venus, 1482, 1984. Screenprint, 32 × 44 in, 81.3 × 111.8 cm. Edition of 70 + proofs.
Andy Warhol, Details of Renaissance Paintings, Sandro Botticelli, Birth of Venus, 1482, 1984. Screenprint, 32 × 44 in, 81.3 × 111.8 cm. Edition of 70 + proofs.

NEW YORK, NY.- The IFPDA Fine Art Print FairOnline 2020, the digital initiative launched on May 13th by the IFPDA (International Fine Print Dealers Association, has yielded impressive online traffic and sales in its first week, reports the IFPDA Executive Director, Jenny Gibbs. “I have heard from so many collectors and curators who are just loving this online event. We could never fit 125 exhibitors into the River Pavilion at the Javits. We got lemons and we made lemonade. This is the biggest IFPDA fair — probably the biggest print fair anywhere — and we’ve put together a dream team of exhibitors with booths of extraordinary depth.”

With more than 125,000 page-views in the opening days and sales across a wide range of works representing 500 years of printmaking, it is a testament to the innovative presentations mounted by the exhibitors and the power of the online sphere where inspiration and commerce coexist during Covid-19.

Originally scheduled to be held at the Javits Center in New York in October with 70 exhibitors, the IFPDA has moved the fair online, invited all members to participate, and waived all exhibitor fees in response to the current economic and health crises. The fair is accessible through the IFPDA Fine Art Print Fair website and on Artsy.com, featuring 109 exhibitors — all vetted members of the IFPDA — representing the largest IFPDA Fine Art Print Fair ever presented and the largest print fair anywhere in the world.

The fair offers a staggering variety of works, both unique and in multiples, from the 15th century to new editions by today’s best-known artists. It is an unprecedented opportunity to view and purchase original prints from the top international dealers, galleries, publishers and studios.

An extremely rare impression of Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut, The Rhinoceros (1515), sold on opening day for six figures from David Tunick, and kicked off a very positive start to the fair.

Outstanding curated virtual experiences have been mounted by IFPDA exhibitors especially for the online fair. For instance, Cristea Roberts, who has been exhibiting at the fair since 1995, has created a virtual booth which would have been impossible to realize in person. Cristea Roberts has dipped into the gallery archives and selected one significant publication made in each year since their first booth — thisincludes Ali Banisadr, Gillian Ayres, Georg Baselitz, Richard Hamilton, Howard Hodgkin, Richard Long, Cornelia Parker and Paul Winstanley. For 2020, they have selected a major new large-scale woodcut by Christiane Baumgartner, aptly titled Wish You Were Here, 2020.

For the 2020 Online Edition of the IFPDA Fine Art Print Fair, Pace Prints is pleased to present Bring Back The Seventies, a celebration of artists whose works were published by Pace Prints in the 1970s. The exhibition recognizes the enduring relevance today of the work of thirteen artists including: Larry Bell, Gene Davis, Agnes Denes, Jean Dubuffet, Alfred Jensen, Nicholas Krushenick, Sven Lukin, Louise Nevelson, Kenzo Okada, Lucas Samaras, George Segal, Ernest Trova and Jack Youngerman. Their editions continue to represent significant contributions to printmaking and to contemporary aesthetic sense, with their bold, hard-edged gestures, simultaneously acknowledging abstraction, Pop Art and Minimalism. The exhibition represents a refreshing return to the past, demonstrating the vitality and compatibility of these works today.

The single artist presentation of Emma Amos at Mary Ryan Gallery surveys an artistically and historically important career spanning five decades. Part of an earlier generation of black American artists who have only recently begun to receive recognition for their contributions, Amos has been a wildly inventive and experimental printmaker for over 60 years and has self-published most of her prints, expanding the canon of printmaking in both materiality and subject matter. She includes lithography, etching, woodcut, silkscreen, collagraph, monotype, woodcut, offset lithography, weaving, collage and photo transfer in her printmaking practice. Sales at the IFPDA Online Fine Art Print Fair include Josephine & The Mountain Gorilla (diptych), 1984, and 3 Ladies, 1970. Etching, relief and silkscreen on vinyl mylar, from an edition of 20.

Works by Milton Avery, Mel Bochner, Derrick Adams, David Hockney, Peter Saul, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, Emma Amos, Judy Chicago and Elizabeth Peyton have led the sales in the contemporary and modern categories.

More in the auction industry