Osvaldo da Silva, center, of Barry Friedman Ltd., New York, works in front of "The Murmur of the Innocents 18," oil on canvass by artist Gottfried Helnwein, of Austria, at the 15th annual American International Fine Art Fair held at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach Saturday. da Silva is flanked by galler owner Barry Friedman, right. The painting is priced at $130,000. The art fair runs from Feb. 5-13, 2011 from 12 noon - 7 pm (til 6 pm on the 13th). One day pass is $15 and multi-day pass $20.
WEST PALM BEACH — Thousands of art fans flocked to Saturday's opening of the American International Fine Art Fair, where the high-end inventory includes a $9.5 million Renoir, a $3 million Monet and a 100-karat diamond.
The show has shrunk to 66 exhibitors this year from 84 last year. Despite that sign of tough times, though, art dealers say the pall that hung over the U.S. economy has lifted, leaving shoppers more likely to shell out big bucks for art."I think the time when the Americans are really depressed is over," said Fabien Boulakia, an art dealer from Paris.
Boulakia's offerings include paintings by Claude Monet and Kees van Dongan priced at $3 million each, a Fernando Botero painting for $1.4 million, canvases by Camille Pissarro and several drawings by Pablo Picasso. Boulakia skipped the annual fair the past few years but returned this year to take advantage of a resurgent mood among American collectors.
Show organizer David Lester predicted 7,000 people would buy tickets on Saturday, and he expects about 40,000 to attend the fair, which runs through Feb. 13. Only a small fraction are buying rather than looking, but Lester said art collectors are opening their wallets."Sales are very good," Lester said. "There's sort of a community belief that the recession seems to be over."
One popular stop on Saturday was Hammer Galleries' exhibit of paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Prices start at $350,000 and top out at $9.5 million for Les Laveuses, an oil painting from 1912. A steady stream of visitors studied the two dozen or so paintings."The response has been phenomenal," said Howard Shaw, president of the New York gallery.
The show's wares - including jewelry, French Impressionist paintings and art by Aboriginies from Australia - appeal to a variety of tastes. One wag looked at Study to Homage to the Square: Protected Blue, an abstract painting by Josef Albers, and cracked, "I hope they didn't accidentally hang it upside down."Dealers showed varying degrees of caginess about prices. London dealer Peter Finer, for instance, declined to disclose the price for a pair of rare French pistols. Others disclosed prices when asked. And Leslie Smith Gallery of Amsterdam clearly labeled prices on its works, which included a Botero painting for $803,000."Why not? There's no need to be mysterious about it," owner David Smith said.
