Art and its echo
This year’s Hamburg Fine Art Fair offers visitors an unrivalled opportunity to compare themes in art across the centuries, writes Claudia Herstatt.
Claudia Herstatt, Monday, 25th August 2008
Frank C. Möller of Hamburg is exhibiting ‘only one’ mirror at the fair, but it is, nevertheless, one that had a formative influence on Swedish baroque. It was made by Burckhard Precht of Bremen, who worked as a royal cabinetmaker in Sweden in 1674 and assimilated French and Italian influences to create what became known as the ‘Precht style’. Otto Mitzlaff from Wächtersbach, a tefaf participant and well-known for his furniture from the Roentgen workshop, is offering a small half-globe table made in Vienna at the beginning of the 19th century (Fig. 5).
With 20 different dealers the potential of the ‘Crossover’ theme is unlimited: Asian porcelain, sculpture and small items of furniture from the
17th to the early 19th centuries are on offer from Hamburg’s Ulla Bodenstab Gallery, together with German porcelain from the early 18th to the early 20th centuries, some by less well-known makers. Among the pieces on the stand is a porcelain equestrian group, made in Vienna around 1744-49.
For the first time, the fair has attracted Hubertus Erfurt, who in 2007, after many years in the art trade, opened a gallery in Cologne focusing on 18th-century art. His contribition to the ‘Crossover’ theme is a contrast between contemporary portraits and a pair by Anton Graff, painted around 1750 and in their original frames (Fig. 4).
Other particpants include Ulf Breede (Berlin) with antique jewellery; Kunsthandel Kratz (Hamburg), who offers Scandinavian and French furniture and silver from the rococo to the Empire periods; Esch Kunsthandel, from Düsseldorf, with faience, silver and furniture; and the Flo Peters Gallery of Hamburg, which reinforces the fair’s emphasis on photography at the fair with an appealing signed silver-gelatine print, View on 42, New York (1946), shot from the waterside by Andreas Feininger.
For further information on the Hamburg Fine Art Fair and a list of its participants, visit www.fine-art-fair.de
LATEST NEWS & COMMMENT
Manhattan transfer
The Lower East Side, once home to immigrants and aspiring artists, is no receiving the uptown treatment.
Shakespeare in stone
The National Trust's plans to acquire Seaton Delaval Hall are a tribute to a genius who has inspired writers and artists for centuries.
In pursuit of collectors
The Fitzwilliam Museum is celebrating the centenary of the directorship of Sydney Carlyle Cockerell with an exhibition that makes clear that he was in many ways the first modern museum director.
Comments
Post a comment