NEW YORK.- The foremost art fair in New York City, The Art Show will offer an outstanding exhibition of paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints and photographs from February 20 - 24, 2003. Organized by the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA), the exhibition will feature museum-quality works in all genres ranging from the 15th century to modern and contemporary art. Seventy of the nation’s leading art dealers will participate in the fifteenth annual Art Show at the Seventh Regiment Armory, Park Avenue at 67th Street, New York City. Proceeds from The Art Show Gala Preview on February 19 will benefit Henry Street Settlement, a pioneering social service agency on New York’s Lower East Side.
"This year we celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the show and dealers have gone all out to bring some extraordinary masterpieces," said O. Kelley Anderson, Jr., Director of The Art Show. "This is the exhibition in the U.S. where collectors can see works of art from the nation’s most prestigious galleries all under one roof."
The Art Show 2003 will feature two special discussion programs. Glenn D. Lowry, Director of the Museum of Modern Art, will present A Museum Director’s Vision on Thursday, February 20, from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. Wendy Wasserstein, playwright and arts enthusiast, will moderate a panel of leading artists on Friday, February 21, from 3:00 to 4:30 p.m.
Seven new galleries will show works for the first time at The Art Show 2003. The galleries are: CRG Gallery, Danese, Paul Kasmin Gallery, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery and Brent Sikkema of New York and Anthony Meier Fine Arts of San Francisco.
Matthew Marks Gallery will present an exhibition of postwar European and American works on paper from Joseph Cornell, Lucian Freud, Roni Horn, Brice Marden, Cy Twombly and many others. Two solo shows of works by one of the most innovative figures of post-war Italian art, Lucio Fontana (1899-1968), will be on view at The Art Show 2003. Sperone Westwater will show ten painting from the late 1950s to the early 1960s and CRG Gallery will focus exclusively on Fontana’s rarely seen ceramic work from the 1940s and early 1950s.
A solo exhibition of paintings and drawings by Hans Hofmann from his 1932 to 1942 Provincetown period will be on exhibit at Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art. Paintings by Willem de Kooning, Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, Ed Ruscha and Richard Diebenkorn will be the highlight at John Berggruen Gallery of San Francisco.
David Zwirner Gallery will show a quintessential example of the abstract work by renowned German artist Gerhard Richter. Abstraktes Bild, 1984, an oil on canvas, was included in the artist’s major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art earlier this year.
Vik Muniz has been painting for some time with edible materials. A new work, The Reader, After Fragonard (from Pictures of Chocolate), 2002, rendered entirely from chocolate syrup, will be on view at Brent Sikkema. Brazilian-born Muniz lives in Brooklyn and recently completed an outdoor work, CandyBAM, which transforms the exterior of the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) into a gingerbread house. A retrospective exhibition of his work will open concurrently with The Art Show at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in February 2003.
Known for his portraits of movie theaters across small town America, Davis Cone, a photo realist painter, has made a dramatic tribute to a New York City icon. Radio City, 2002, a luminous acrylic on canvas depicting America’s most famous theater, shining with holiday lights, can be seen at Forum Gallery. Cone’s work is chronicled in two books, including, most recently, Popcorn Palaces, The Art Deco Movie Paintings of Davis Cone, 2001 published by Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
Knoedler & Company will show important works by mid-century masters including Lee Bontecou, widely recognized for her welded steel sculptures, in which she incorporated various fabrics, metals, and found objects. A retrospective exhibition of Bontecou’s work is being organized in 2004 and will travel to MoMA QNS.
A number of notable works on paper can be seen at The Art Show 2003. A beautiful drawing by Gustav Klimt from 1888-89 will be on view at Galerie St. Etienne. The work, Portrait of a Young Girl, shows remarkable depth and completion, a rarity since Klimt used his drawings primarily as studies for his paintings. C+M Arts will show a timely work on paper by Roy Lichtenstein related to his 1960s series of paintings entitled Men at War.
A signature painting with a wry sense of humor by Robert Indiana, Ginkgo, 2000, will be on view at Paul Kasmin Gallery. The gallery will present a Robert Indiana exhibition concurrent with The Art Show 2003. Tony Smith’s oil on canvas, Louisenberg #4, 1953-54, was completed when the artist was living in Germany and can be seen at Mitchell-Innes & Nash. Rarely exhibited, the Louisenberg paintings, some 25 in all, have not been seen publicly in New York since they were featured in the Tony Smith retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art five years ago. In lush greens and blues, Joan Mitchell’s George, 1977, at Robert Miller Gallery, is a signature example of the artist’s abstractions, shown recently at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
A major work from the Estate of Howard and Harriet Wolfson of Chicago will be shown by Richard Gray Gallery of New York and Chicago. Roberto Matta’s La Révolte des contraires, 1944, represents a Surrealist space of the subconscious, as well as a reflection of the world as it existed after World War II.
Although it appears to be chalk on a blackboard, Vernon Fisher’s new work, Path of Beggars, is actually in oil and will be on view at Charles Cowles Gallery. New paintings by major figurative painter Bo Bartlett will be the highlight at PPOW. Bartlett’s works will be the subject of a large-scale traveling museum retrospective beginning in Columbus, Georgia, the artist’s hometown, in January 2003. One new painting, Fog Girl, 2002, depicts a beautiful young topless woman looking pensively at the sea.
A charming oil by William Glackens of toy sailboats in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris from ca. 1895 will be on view at Kraushaar Galleries, Inc. Thomas Hart Benton’s Missouri Landscape, 1956, will be a highlight at Kennedy Galleries. The painting comes directly from the artist’s family and has never been available for sale. Works by prominent African-American artists will be shown at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, including Romare Bearden’s Kansas City, 1974, depicting the artist’s famous look at jazz and the black experience.
Works by vintage masters such as Edward Weston, Brett Weston, Paul Strand, Imogen Cunningham, Andre Kertesz and Ansel Adams will be on view at Weston Gallery of Carmel, CA. Tracing the development of the paper negative in Great Britain and France during the 1840s and 1850s will be the focus at Hans P. Kraus, Jr. Inc. Laurence Miller Gallery will show works from French photographer Stephan Couturier’s first American series. The large-scale color prints powerfully and ironically capture the vivid colors and beauty of the invasive suburban sprawl of San Diego, Calif. Women in Photography will be the theme at Edwynn Houk Gallery. Works by Diane Arbus, Imogen Cunningham, Tina Modotti and Dora Maar will be on view as well as new work by Lynn Davis and Sally Mann.
Alexander Calder’s Red Gong, 1951, moves to a beat at O’Hara Gallery. The artist’s mobile is a rare musical work, which creates sounds with a striker hitting a brass plate as it rotates. Elizabeth Catlett’s Elvira, 1999, depicts the head of a woman with nobility, poise and dignity. The terra cotta is considered one of the artist’s finest works and can be seen at June Kelly Gallery, Inc.
The Art Show 2003 will be held from Thursday, February 20, through Monday, February 24, at the Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue at 67th Street, New York City. Admission is $15 per day. The show hours are as follows: Thursday through Saturday, 12 noon to 8 p.m., Sunday and Monday, 12 noon to 6 p.m. No advance purchase is required. Tickets will be available at the door.