Young Fair Art Antwerp Leans Into the City’s Centuries-Old Collecting Culture

Antwerp has been a hub for collectors for centuries—research has shown that as early as the 1500s, 90 percent of homeowners in Antwerp owned at least one portrait or religious painting. Against this backdrop, Art Antwerp, while founded in 2021, has a deep legacy. The fifth edition, which took place from December 12 through 14 with a preview day on December 11, gathered 79 galleries from 11 countries via an invite-only model that didn’t draw boundaries between emerging and established.

Belgian galleries made up 42 percent of the exhibitor roster, with the Netherlands and France being the most represented countries thereafter at 25 percent and 16 percent, respectively. There were 20 new galleries in the mix, including Night Café from the U.K., Alzueta Gallery from Spain and In Situ – fabienne leclerc from France. Of the about 270 artists featured in the fair, 16 percent were under 35.

The fair embraced Antwerp’s art scene, with 18 percent of participating galleries based in the city itself. Sofie Van de Velde participates in Art Brussels but, according to the gallery’s artist liaison Theresia Wastiau, sees Art Antwerp as “more intimate, more spacious.” Wastiau also lauded the “hometown advantage.” Among the many compelling offerings at the booth were a coated glass, acrylic resin and aluminum piece by Filip Vervaet; Klaas Rommelaere’s hand-embroidery on cotton; and an Ives Maes UV print on multiplex with oil paint, graphite and afrormosia wood that sold on the preview day.

Koen Leemans, director at Antwerp-based Keteleer, also spoke of the fair’s local appeal and the strong interest in young and emerging artists, of which they showed several. Keteleer had the second-largest booth and showed new works by 16 artists, spanning inkjet prints on rag paper by Paul Kooiker for €1,600, an acrylic on cotton work by Naofumi Maruyama for €40,000 and a Stephan Balkenhol painted wood sculpture for €64,000.

A third local gallery, Gallery FIFTY ONE, mounted a solo booth—a repeat decision after featuring Bruno V. Roels last year. “It’s quieter than the big fairs like Paris Photo, which is very, very crowded,” gallery assistant director Fanny Snijders told Observer. This year, the gallery showed work by Belgian artist Katrien De Blauwer: self-described as a photographer without a camera, she assembles images from mid-20th-century magazines, her signature being truncated faces and female silhouettes. The series of all new works was made specifically for the fair. Unique images started at €1,200, while the blown-up editions were priced at €3,000. The image that graced the cover of the gallery’s publication Blue Bruises was sold on the preview day.

Exhibitor Lelong & Co. shows at many fairs in major hubs like Paris, Basel and Miami, but gallery director Nathalie Berghege feels that those destinations are not the only ones worth exploring. “It’s nice to have these kinds of fairs compared to big fairs; it’s another opportunity to discover artists under nice conditions,” Berghege told Observer. “Belgian people are very open… so it’s important that we come to them, not only that they come to us.” Moreover, she added, it’s a way “to enable younger artists to be part of younger fairs.” The prices at the booth ranged from accessible works on paper by Pierre Alechinsky (€3,000-€4,000) to a 2024 bronze sculpture by Jaume Plensa (€320,000). Christine Safa, whose work is currently on view at the gallery space in Paris, was represented at the booth by a small painting (€9,000).

Gallery Richard Saltoun keeps a bracing pace with 22 fairs per year—Frieze Masters, TEFAF and Abu Dhabi Art among them—in a rotation that includes less flashy fairs like Art Antwerp. “It’s really interesting to test smaller markets,” said gallery rep Tessa Cranfield, noting that Richard Saltoun also participates in the similarly sized Vienna Contemporary. Their booth focused on artists from or with close ties to Belgium, including a piece by Polish-Romanian André Cadere that had historic significance, being on view outside the Internationaal Cultureel Centrum (ICC) in Antwerp in 1975, listed at €180,000; nearby, Belgian artist Jacqueline Poncelet’s pieces ranged from €8,000 to €20,000. These were mixed in with selected works by Henri Chopin, Fernand Khnopff and Francis Picabia.

Stigter Van Doesburg from Amsterdam showed three female artists (the gallery’s overall roster is two-thirds women). Bobbi Essers and Erika Peucelle, whose oil on canvas works ranged from €4,000 to €12,000, are in their 20s, while mid-career artist  Dina Danish sold a €13,000 hand-sewn embroidery textile on the preview day. Gallerist David Van Doesburg told Observer: “I think in Belgium, it’s [more common] that people in society buy art and collect. In the Netherlands, I think it’s still about class. It’s far more democratic here… culture is a part of everyday life.”

The latest edition of Art Antwerp marked the debut of the Art Antwerp Acquisition Prize, borrowing from a newly minted tradition initiated at Art Brussels. A work of art valued at up to €10,000 was donated to the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA), funded by Delen Private Bank. There were no criteria regarding the artist’s age, gender or nationality. The prize is a win/win/win: it allows an artist to have their work included in an institutional collection, the gallery gets a sale and the museum adds to its holdings. This year’s prize was awarded to French artist Laure Prouvost for her floral trompe l’oeil oil on mirror piece Sweaty Cuddle. Represented by Galerie Nathalie Obadia in Brussels and Paris, Prouvost is already a well-established name, having received the Turner Prize in 2013 and represented France at the Venice Biennale in 2019. Next year, she will have a solo exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris.

Other new features at this year’s edition included a free Art Advisory Desk, which helped the public navigate the fair in a gesture to make collecting less intimidating to those who are curious or keen to find works within a specific price range or aesthetic genre.

The fair was backgrounded by some Belgian art world turmoil. In October, the Flemish government announced plans to dissolve M HKA—Belgium’s oldest contemporary art museum, which opened in 1985—a move that has been met with fierce pushback. Its collection of 8,000 works is supposed to move to the contemporary art museum in Ghent; the merger is due to happen by 2028, in tandem with canceling a multi-million euro project for a new M HKA building that had been in the works for years. “Nobody is happy about it,” Fanny Snijders from Gallery FIFTY ONE told Observer. “I’m not sure what it’s going to give in the long term—how it will change, if it will change.” M HKA senior curator Anne-Claire Schmitz called the move “explosive” and “disturbing,” especially because it reflected “the diminishing power of cultural institutions” more widely.

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