The energy on opening night was palpable, according to TEFAF New York director Leanne Jagtiani. “No matter how consistent it is year after year, I’m always dazzled by the quality of work our exhibitors bring to the Armory,” she told Observer. “Walking through the booths, you could sense the enthusiasm—exhibitors clearly felt the vibrant energy of the crowd and were engaged in meaningful conversation.” Indeed, some dealers reported near-immediate sales, and others quickly found themselves in deep talks with promising collectors. And while murmurs about a champagne shortage and swapped-out tulips were read by some as signs of austerity, the fair once again affirmed its standing as the premier marketplace for the exceptional, regardless of the economic climate.
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David Zwirner opened the fair with a solo presentation of elegantly suspended sculptures by Ruth Asawa, accompanied by a series of works on paper that captured her poetic and process-driven approach with quiet precision. Reflecting a deep engagement with nature, geometry and process-based making, Asawa looped wire into ethereal, biomorphic tridimensional crochet, challenging the boundaries between sculpture, craft and drawing while exploring the relationship between space and form, light and shadow. The gallery sold four sculptures priced between $320,000 and $2.8 million and six works on paper priced between $50,000 and $160,000.
That same day, Ortuzar Projects, in collaboration with Marc Selwyn Fine Art, sold Lee Bontecou’s iconic Untitled (1959) for a price reportedly in the $2 million range. The museum-quality presentation highlighted Bontecou’s visionary fusion of postwar anxiety and cosmic wonder—her signature machine-organic hybrids forged from industrial detritus. Evoking both space probes and bodily voids, Bontecou’s cratered forms exist somewhere between lunar landscapes and anatomical maps, channeling a haunting new relationship between humanity and the cosmos.
Meanwhile, Thaddaeus Ropac reported rapid sales of nearly every Daniel Richter canvas in the fair’s first few hours. Two large oil paintings—sperlingskleine WEISE (2024) and Triumph des Höhnischen—each surpassed $470,000. “It’s been an extremely busy opening, perhaps even more so than last year,” said the Austrian dealer, noting the “very positive response” to Richter’s new paintings from TEFAF’s reliably sophisticated and informed buyer base.
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Standing out for both quality and curatorial strength was Robilant Voena’s booth, which included a monumental pink Andy Warhol tribute to celebrities, Myths (Multiple) (1981), in dialogue with a rare and graceful brass sculpture by Melotti, three rare Fucsia slashes and a fourth work by Lucio Fontana, along with ceramics by the Argentinian pioneer of space and matter. “We are very happy with the attendance of our clients and collectors! TEFAF has also been incremental in supporting our presence in New York, especially as we have reopened our new gallery close by,” commented Robilant Voena. “We have seen a healthy mix of American and European attendees.”
Another long-time exhibitor at TEFAF, the London- and Italy-based gallery Cardi reportedly placed several works with American collectors, including historical pieces such as Piero Manzoni’s Achrome (1962), priced above $330,000; Agostino Bonalumi’s Bianco (1989), with an asking price of $120,000; and décollages by Mimmo Rotella, each listed at $55,000. The gallery also sold two works by contemporary Italian-born, New York–based artist Davide Balliano for $35,000 each—he will have a solo exhibition at Tina Kim gallery in the coming months. “In this particular moment, I felt collectors’ response was both responsible and solid—they’ve slyly returned to the market, sensing this is a buy moment,” gallery owner Nicolo Cardi told Observer. By Monday, the gallery had also placed works by Josef Albers and Raymond Pettibon and had a Richard Serra and a Mimmo Paladino on reserve.
Tornabuoni Arte—an Italian gallery and TEFAF veteran specializing in postwar masterpieces—also reported strong sales to new buyers from the U.S. and Europe, including a metaphysical piazza by Giorgio De Chirico, an embroidery and ballpoint pen airplane work by Alighiero Boetti, a poetic piece by Claudio Parmiggiani and a work by Mimmo Rotella, while a striking white Lucio Fontana remains on hold.
Some of the offerings at TEFAF also aligned intriguingly with the upcoming spring marquee auctions. As Barbara Gladstone’s personal collection heads to the block—led by Richard Prince’s iconic Nurse—the series made a parallel return across the fairs: Gana Art from Seoul presented a Masquerade Nurse from the 2000s, originally acquired from Gladstone’s collection in 2014 by a Korean collector and now offered with a $5.5 million price tag. Gladstone Gallery brought works from the dealer’s private holdings, including a suite of George Condo drawings, most of which were acquired directly from the artist and had never been seen on the market before. The gallery swiftly placed forty-five of them, with prices ranging from $15,000 to $150,000.
While TEFAF New York leans toward the modern and contemporary, it wasn’t all blue-chip masterworks. Sprüth Magers showcased a new series of bronze reliefs by Anne Imhof, translating her visceral, performance-based explorations of the body, identity and societal tension into a material language rooted in permanence. Returning to the Park Avenue Armory after her unforgettable live performance, DOOM, Imhofs Untitled (Silas) (2024) sold to a private U.S. collection for €250,000. A suite of drawings from her Cerberus series (2024), mapping the tension between human and animal, gesture and emotion, also went to a European collector.
Quite timely with the daily news, Leon Tovar was offering a large-scale, humorous Fernando Botero portrayal of a pope, El Nuncio (1987). León Tovar, owner of the gallery, expressed his excitement about the unexpected alignment, describing it as a “magical coincidence.” The curatorial concept of their booth this year was inspired by the movie Conclave and the idea of unification, with other works by Latino masters such as Rufino Tamayo and Wifredo Lam. “It is just a magical coincidence; Pope Francis dies, an American pope is elected, and here we have this impressive work by Botero, which represents precisely that link between art and spirituality,” Tovar said. The painting had an asking price in the $3 million range.
Meanwhile, as its two galleries stage museum-quality exhibitions devoted to modern and contemporary masters, Gagosian dedicated its entire TEFAF booth to a solo presentation of works by the talented young figurative painter—and Larry’s former girlfriend—Anna Weyant. By the end of opening day, the gallery had reportedly placed Spring Florals, a large-scale canvas priced at $300,000, along with eight intimately scaled new paintings priced at $90,000 each. Depicting jewelry items such as pearl bracelets, gold chains and daisy pendants rendered inside jewelry boxes with minimal detail, these trompe l’oeil works—explicitly conceived for the fair—created a tidy visual dialogue with the rest of the presentation. In the end, though, they read more as virtuosic exercises in decorative hyperrealism than meaningful critiques of consumerism, despite their conceptual pretense.
Kasmin also reported the sale of a group of works spanning a broad price range—from Yves Klein’s iconic La Victoire de Samothrace, sold for $17,500, and a gelatin silver print of his memorable performance Leap Into the Void, October 27, for $35,000, to Janaina Tschäpe’s oil stick on canvas Summer thoughts (2025), sold for $95,000. Additional placements included a pencil and charcoal on paper by Jannis Kounellis priced at $25,000, two Hugo McCloud oil paintings at $115,000 each and Mariko Mori’s crystal-like sculpture Plasma Stone II (2017-2018), sold for $325,000.
Similarly strong on the contemporary side was White Cube, which placed Tracey Emin’s visceral You please me (2022) for nearly $400,000, a group of Julie Mehretu’s etchings for $250,000 and Ed Ruscha’s acrylic on canvas Brave Men Study I (1995).
Among the standout works, Galerie Lefebvre presented a stunning Amedeo Modigliani drawing—a distilled formal study of the human head, clearly inspired by African masks and Cycladic sculpture. Originally conceived as a sketch for a lost 1911 sculpture, the work now stands as the sole surviving testament to this level of synthesis and mastery in Modigliani’s practice. During the preview, the dealer confided to Observer that, given the response at the fair confirming its rarity and power, he was seriously considering keeping it for himself. Another gem: a vibrant 1984 Jean-Michel Basquiat on a blue background at Van de Weghe’s booth, shown alongside miniature works by Alexander Calder and Henry Moore—and a floor piece by Carl Andre that fairgoers kept unwittingly stepping on, too distracted by the overall quality of the presentation to notice.
A notable presence in Salon 94’s booth was the work of Aboriginal artist Mantua Nangala, whose market and institutional presence has surged in recent years. Her intricate acrylic-on-linen dot paintings visualize the sacred landscape of Marrapinti in the Gibson Desert, translating ancestral Dreaming stories into rhythmic, almost cartographic compositions that link micro and macro worlds. Priced around $80,000 each, they offer a contemporary language for inherited knowledge—anchored in tradition but speaking fluently to today’s global art stage. The gallery also sold several works by Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye and Mitsuko Asakura in the $40,000-90,000 range.
Meanwhile, Richard Saltoun spotlighted generations of pioneering fiber artists from across geographies, with standouts including wall tapestries by Magdalena Abakanowicz—one originally featured in the seminal 1969 MoMA exhibition “Wall Hangings”—and a luminous gold piece by Olga de Amaral, timed to coincide with her evening auction debut and a major show at Fondation Cartier. Lisson Gallery, instrumental in building De Amaral’s international market, also placed her Tierra y fibra 3 (1988) alongside Sean Scully’s Wall Tappan Deep Red (2025) for $500,000, Dalton Paula’s Zacimba Gaba (2025) for $200,000 and Kelly Akashi’s Be Me (A Thousand Flowers) (2021) for $50,000, following her memorable recent show at the gallery during last Frieze Los Angeles.
Here, the demand for Impressionist masters remains strong. David Tunick sold a Cézanne double-sided portrait drawing of the artist’s only son in the six-figure price range. Also in the early days of the fair, French dealer Almine Rech sold a delightfully feminine portrait of a woman by Marie Laurencin—priced between $300,000 and $350,000—a figure who was extremely active within the same Parisian artistic circles of the early 20th Century but has only recently been reconsidered by the market. Rech also placed works by Ali Cherri ($150,000-170,000), Zio Ziegler ($55,000-70,000), Inès Longevial ($40,000-50,000), a new painting by Chloe Wise ($25,000-30,000) and one work by Dylan Solomon Kraus ($20,000-25,000).
As TEFAF remains a stage for both discoveries and rediscoveries, one of the most remarkable inclusions in this year’s edition is a recently resurfaced portrait of an African prince by Gustav Klimt, long thought lost during World War II. Presented by Vienna’s Wienerroither & Kohlbacher Gallery with a €15 million price tag, the extraordinary painting underwent meticulous cleaning, confirming its prestigious attribution. Believed to have remained with Klimt until it hit the block at Vienna’s Samuel Kende auction house in 1923 with a starting price of 15,000 crowns, the work was likely acquired by Ernestine Klein and her husband, a wine wholesaler, as referenced in records from a 1928 “Secession” exhibition—its last known public appearance. The Kleins fled Austria in 1938 as the Nazis took power, living secretly in Monaco and likely leaving the painting behind. It remained unaccounted for until its recent resurfacing and is now back on the market, following a restitution settlement with Ernestine Klein’s heirs.
TEFAF, unfortunately, was likely the spring art fair hit hardest by the new tariffs, with dealers facing added costs and bureaucratic complications, particularly in categories like design, antiquities and jewelry, which were present in smaller numbers compared to the Maastricht edition. Still, true quality triumphed over red tape. Friedman Benda sold a unique Wendell Castle piece from 1966 on the first day, while Didier Ltd, a gallery specializing in artist-designed jewelry, quickly placed a seductive gold pendant medallion featuring a sunken-relief rampant bull by Pablo Picasso—made in collaboration with his dentist, Dr. Philippe Châtaignier—as well as a textured gold pendant with a red enamel bird by Georges Braque.
On the antiquities side, a particular standout was the Roman head of a bearded god from the 2nd century AD presented by Charles Ede. The sculpture was striking for its expressive realism: heavily lidded eyes gaze forward with incised irises and drilled crescent pupils, offering a rare glimpse of classical naturalism at the height of the Roman Empire—a period marked by peace, prosperity, imperial stability and cultural grandeur. Meanwhile, David Aron Ltd presented two fascinating Cycladic Venus sculptures, powerful and essential representations of femininity. In the early days of the fair, the gallery also sold a remarkable hollow-cast bronze Horus Falcon dated to the Late Egyptian Period—a time when the falcon’s symbolism carried deep religious and artistic meaning, tied to the god revered as the unifier and protector of the nation. The piece came to market with prestigious provenance, having once belonged to the celebrated Swedish art historian and collector Dr. Emil Hultmark. Another standout in the booth was a set of Corsican bronze objects from the late Bronze Age (circa 900 B.C.), discovered near Ajaccio between 1800 and 1890. The set contains three bow fibulae, including the largest with a typical violin-bow form, together with a dagger, a uniform bronze (likely a belt buckle), a pommel, a disc—possibly part of a horse harness or brooch—and three simple rings that may have been used as a form of proto-currency.
Overall, TEFAF’s steady activity across price points reflects a U.S. art market that is still one of the most fertile grounds for high-end sales. Increasingly selective, American collectors are buying, but only when a work delivers true quality and exceptionality—this fair’s bread and butter.
