"New York's IFPDA Stakes a Claim for Why Prints Are More Than Just an Entry Point for Budding Collectors"
By Maximiliano Duron
October 27, 2022
Art fairs tend to cultivate the sense that everything is on view is hugely expensive and not affordable to almost anyone who passes through their doors. But not so at the International Fine Print Dealers Association’s annual print fair, whose first in-person edition since 2020 opened today in New York and runs until Sunday. “We think of the art market as being very exclusive,” Jenny Gibbs, the fair’s executive director, told ARTnews. “Of course, that’s part of it, but we’re also working to be really inclusive.”
At the Javits Center, the fair is bringing together a mix of 76 exhibitors, including leading print publishers like Brooke Alexander, Gemini G.E.L., Crown Point Press, and Flying Horse Editions, as well as blue-chip galleries like Hauser & Wirth and David Zwirner. The latter is making its IFPDA debut. So too are Aliso Editions, Galerie Myrtis, and EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, all of whom are not members of the association, which formerly only allowed enrollees to participate.
Another exhibitor, Peter Blum, has a long history with editioned works. When Blum moved to New York from Switzerland in 1980, he quickly began collaborating with a range of artists, from established ones like Alex Katz and John Baldessari to ones whose careers were just exploding, like Eric Fischl, Sherrie Levine, and Barbara Kruger.
“Publishing editioned works has always been an essential part of Peter Blum’s life,” said Kyle Harris, a director for Peter Blum Editions. “Prints are the foundation of the gallery.”
At the fair, the gallery will be showing a survey of its output over the past three decades, including aquatints dating to 1985 by Fischl, photogravures from 2007 by Huma Bhabha, new monotypes by Nicholas Galanin, and a 1992 self-portrait by Louise Bourgeois in which the artist is depicted as a tree that measures nearly 4 feet tall. It’s is the largest print Bourgeois ever produced. Additionally, the booth will also show several woodcuts by Katz, who is currently the subject of a major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum.