PARIS.- The 2017 edition of Art Paris Art Fair closed its doors on 2nd April having totalled 54,537 visitors from 53 different countries, a 3 % increase on the previous year.

Africa was the fair’s guest of honour in 2017 and the continent certainly gave a real boost to this edition that brought together 139 galleries from 29 countries from March 30th to April 2nd. There was a noticeable feeling of enthusiasm right from the opening night attended by 15,640 people (a 10% increase compared to 2016), encouraged by the effervescence accompanying the various events around Paris that echoed the fair’s focus.

If most exhibitors were very pleased with their sales results, which were satisfactory despite the morose economic context, they all underlined the quality of the new contacts they made during the fair. A lot of visitors when questioned praised the fair’s quality and Art Paris Art Fair’s original positioning: a spring fair of discovery that makes room for a multitude of cultural scenes, new artists and new art forms.

This year, there were more than 750 accredited journalists from all over the world present at the fair, compared to 550 the year before, and numerous personalities from the worlds of politics, art, entertainment and business made an appearance in the aisles: Keziah Jones, Robert Longo, Lilian Thuram, Aure Atika, Jean-Pierre Mocky, Stéphane Bern, Jean-Michel Ribes, Laure Adler, Laurent Fabius, Claude Chirac, Rick Owens and Michèle Lamy, as well as the representatives of several Parisian museums: Bernard Blistène and Catherine David (Centre Pompidou), Suzanne Pagé (Fondation Louis Vuitton) and Laurent Le Bon (Musée Picasso).

The fair also welcomed several art circles from the African diaspora and numerous friends of museum groups (29 from France and 42 from other European countries) including: the Tate Patrons, Les Amis de 1.54, The American Friends of the Louvre, Uberblick (Holland, Spain, USA), The Friends of the Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington), The Friends of the Johannesburg Art Gallery, NKW Freundeskreis (Vienna), The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, MMK Collector’s Club (Frankfurt), Amici del MAXXI (Rome), Kunstverein (Cologne), Les Amis du Centre Pompidou Metz, ERSTE Foundation (Vienna), The Independent Collectors (Berlin), The SMAK Patrons (Ghent) etc...

82 specialised guided tours were organised for collectors with the assistance of the Observatoire de l’art contemporain.

The 2017 edition also saw the launch of the L’art est vivant prize, which aims to help a young artist, exhibiting in the Promises sector devoted to galleries that opened less than six years ago, at a key moment in his/her career. On Friday March 31st, the 5,000 euro prize was awarded to Dalila Dalléas Bouzar (born 1974), who is represented by Galerie Cécile Fakhoury (Abidjan).

Art Paris Art Fair also hosted the Aurélie Nemours prize that was awarded to Jean-François Dubreuil (born 1946).