Inside TEFAF New York’s Opening Preview

The ninth edition of TEFAF New York opened its collectors’ preview on May 14 at the Park Avenue Armory. The European Fine Art Foundation is, by design, the serious one. Ten years after the Maastricht-based institution first planted its flag in the city, it remains the most European fair in New York, and the most rigorous.

Going to TEFAF always feels more like stepping into a museum than an art fair and this year was no exception. Via 88 dealers, foreign and domestic, this year’s edition included master works by Basquiat, Hockney, Cy Twombly, Kusama, and Ruscha. Some of the highlights included: delicate botanical drawings by the Czech artist Anna Zemánková, a dentist by training who returned to painting after an emotional crisis, at Gladstone; a booth at Richard Saltoun devoted entirely to female Surrealists; and at Charles Ede, a seated ibis in gilt wood from Late Dynastic Egypt presiding over a trio of 1920s meditation plates by the Dutch mystic Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, abstract diagrams in ink and gold that Carl Jung once had removed from exhibition because he disliked her use of black. On the more contemporary side, large mythological canvases by the young Danish painter Eva Helene Pade at Thaddaeus Ropac stole the show.

The preview evening benefited The Society of Memorial Sloan Kettering. Attendees included many of the familiar Palm Beach faces who never miss an opportunity to see the best the art and design worlds have to offer.