TEFAF New York 2026 Sees Strong Sales Across Art and Design

For four days, TEFAF brought its unmistakable European flair to New York’s Park Avenue Armory, gathering 90 exhibitors that mounted presentations showcasing everything from modern and contemporary masterpieces to antiques, decorative arts and jewelry. While the New York edition tends to give more prominence to modern and contemporary artworks—not least because it takes place in conjunction with the May marquee auctions—this year’s fair still offered gems for all tastes and price points.

The fair opened for the Collector Preview with record attendance on May 14, with visitors packing the booths with the classic champagne flute in hand. Yet it wasn’t all spectacle and chatter. At the end of the day, dealers had already reported sales across price tiers and categories, with a general sense that confidence had significantly improved and that collectors were engaging with a new level of seriousness, both in their questions and in their transactions. Blue-chip postwar names with solid institutional recognition, in particular, moved fast. Italian gallery ML Fine Art placed an iconic Andy Warhol Mao in the first hour, while Mennour sold a stunning Lucio Fontana Concetto Spaziale for $2.3 million.

Bologna-based Galleria d’Arte Maggiore g.a.m. reported selling a Natura morta, dated 1946, by Giorgio Morandi, as well as a work by Italian pop artist Giosetta Fioroni, Lampadina, from 1960, that was included in her solo show at New York’s Drawing Center in 2013. A true gem in the booth was the prototype of Meret Oppenheim’s iconic Souvenir de la déjeuner en fourrure, 1970 (the original is in the MoMA collection), which found a buyer on the first day. The gallery also reported entertaining active negotiations for works by Dadamaino and Léger. No stranger to the New York scene, Galleria d’Arte Maggiore g.a.m. has been active in the market since 2007, first through participation in The Armory Show—where they also served on the selection committee—and, for the past few years, at TEFAF New York. “Returning to New York is always an opportunity to meet with our collectors, who over the years have also become friends and who never miss a chance to visit us in Bologna at our gallery’s historic headquarters, as well as in Venice at our foundation, ACP Palazzo Franchetti by Fondazione Calarota, or in Paris at our new exhibition space on Boulevard Saint-Germain,” Alessia Calarota, the second-generation owner who leads the gallery today, told Observer, emphasizing how the gallery has also collaborated with many local institutions, including the Met, to which they lent several works for the major Giorgio Morandi exhibition in 2008.

Pace Di Donna Schrader Galleries introduced the new secondary-market partnership between Pace Gallery, Emmanuel Di Donna and David Schrader with its first shared booth at TEFAF, anchored by a 1956 Rothko, a rare Eugène Delacroix painting and exemplary works by Alexander Calder, Jean Arp and Joan Mitchell. “Opening day was met with enthusiasm around the new venture from a range of collector groups,” partner Emmanuel Di Donna told Observer, noting how it’s clear there’s a serious audience for Modern and Postwar work of a certain caliber. “At TEFAF those collectors had the chance to see firsthand how PDS can bring together major names of the period—including artists like Mark Rothko, who remains at the very center of today’s market—in a presentation rooted in artworks of historical significance and rarity.” He added that there’s a real appetite for what their new partnership offers, a partnership that “has a different energy than anything any of us have done before.”

Several booths sold out during the preview, including blue-chip galleries that opted for focused solo presentations of in-demand contemporary artists. Lévy Gorvy Dayan, for instance, dedicated its booth to small, intimate paintings by Jenna Gribbon, while Gagosian presented Kathleen Ryan’s shining Bad Fruit sculptures and Gladstone sold 20 works by Czech painter Anna Zemánková for prices ranging from $75,000 to $125,000. Meanwhile, White Cube seemed to have no qualms about showcasing Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang’s pyrotechnic abstraction in a solo booth after the backlash just a few months ago over the alleged environmental harm and cultural desecration caused by his performance in Tibet.

Thaddaeus Ropac also devoted his TEFAF booth to a contemporary rising star, staging the U.S. debut of Danish painter Eva Helene Pade and her enveloping orgies of bodies suspended between Eros and Thanatos. Following her recent solo show in London and a string of strong auction results, the presentation sold out immediately, with three works placed with U.S. institutions. The large canvases were priced between $160,000 and $200,000. “Our first presentation of Eva’s work in the U.S. has been received with great enthusiasm, and we are very happy that all works have been placed with American institutions,” Ropac commented.

Other longtime TEFAF exhibitors opted for curated showcases of lesser-known names, leaving room for discovery. Axel Vervoordt Gallery presented a solo show of Italian painter Ida Barbarigo, featuring rarely seen works from the mid-1950s, 1960s and 1970s, all priced between $12,000 and $70,000. The booth traced the evolution of Barbarigo’s abstraction, from more formal, geometric compositions still shaped by her architectural training to a more gesturally lyrical, atmospheric language that became entirely her own. Born Ida Cadorin into a prominent Venetian family of artists, architects and sculptors, Barbarigo returned obsessively to the chair, transforming this humble object into her central leitmotif: less furniture than witness, a sign of presence and absence, body and memory. Over time, her subject progressively dissolved through repetition, distortion and muted, layered space, becoming a psychological and almost spectral form. As her lines grew more fluid and elusive, in what she called “interactions between the solid and the void,” Barbarigo used abstraction to paint unseen energy, silence and the emotional density of the space between things—the entanglement of energies and frequencies that connect us all. “We were pleased to introduce Barbarigo’s work in New York, and she was an inspiring discovery for the audience at the Armory,” Boris Vervoordt told Observer. “We had many enthusiastic and interesting conversations with collectors and curators, with notable sales and institutional sales.”

Particularly intriguing was Richard Saltoun, whose booth focused on women artists in Surrealism and mystical art, highlighting several pioneering figures long overlooked who not only participated in the movement but also expanded the possibilities of the subconscious as a tool for transformation, resistance and invention. The unique seductive power of these symbolically resonant images translated into several early sales, including of an intricate, pyrographed wood panel by Canadian artist Mimi Benoit Parent with an asking price of $200,000, a painting by Puerto Rican artist Cossette Zeno priced at $18,000 and one by French artist Valentine Hugo sold for $80,000.

Meanwhile, Leon Tovar once again assembled a trove of Latin American gems, anchored by a poetically mystical Leonora Carrington work, El gato (1951), offered at a seven-digit price. An important example of Carrington’s surrealist universe, the painting distills the dreamlike symbolism, mysticism and poetic imagination that define her most celebrated period. It appeared alongside a vibrant red Rufino Tamayo, an expansive Wifredo Lam that covered an entire wall with enigmatic hybrid figures and dreamlike compositions following the artist’s major survey at MoMA, two psychedelic paintings by Colombian artist Emma Reyes and ceramic sculptures by Tecla Tofano, the Italian-born Venezuelan artist, writer and educator recognized as one of the pioneering figures of contemporary ceramic art in Latin America. Together, the works created a booth charged with the same mystical, mysterious energy that radiates from Carrington’s world.

Another must-see this year was the Larkin Erdmann booth, entirely dedicated to Man Ray, following a recent Met exhibition devoted to the artist. Spanning more than five decades, the presentation brought together works across painting, photography, drawing and objects, tracing Man Ray’s continual reinvention across media and his restless experimentation with form, chance and poetic subversion. Highlights included Giant Chess Set (1961), one of the artist’s largest chess sets conceived as both game and Surrealist object, alongside a rare 1926 Rayograph, La Prière (1930, printed 1960s), Cadeau (c. 1963) and Still Life (1913), each reflecting pivotal moments in his practice. On the occasion, the gallery also released its new publication, Man Ray: To Create is Divine, which was available at the fair.

Among other early sales, dealer Tina Kim reported several sales of Korean masters at the end of the VIP opening, including two paintings by Ha Chong-Hyun: one for $390,000 and a second for $250,000. The gallerist also sold two contemporary paintings by Kibong Rhee, priced at $100,000 each, and a trapunto work by Filipina artist Pacita Abad, priced at $200,000 (the artist is currently the subject of a dedicated solo show at the gallery).

Focusing on American abstraction, Yares Art presented the usual gems, with a compelling pairing of Robert Motherwell and David Smith, alongside a similar dialogue of works by Helen Frankenthaler and Anthony Caro, echoing the exhibition on view at the gallery’s New York space during the fair.

Masterpieces abounded throughout the fair’s two floors. London dealer Ben Hunter brought a beautiful Lucian Freud nude from 2001, following the £7.41 million result for his Blond Girl on a Bed, 1987, sold at Sotheby’s London in March. A portrait of his brother Diego by Giacometti, dated 1947, anchored the Gibson Fine Art booth, while another Tête de Diego from 1946 appeared in the Van de Weghe booth upstairs, accompanied by the usual selection of museum-quality works by Jean-Michel Basquiat (1980), Pablo Picasso and an iconic Andy Warhol Diamond Dust Shoes. For the gallery’s sales director Pierre Ravelle-Chapuis TEFAF felt more focused this year, and serious collectors have been showing real enthusiasm. “In a selective market, buyers responded well to quality works with strong provenance and thoughtful presentations in the historic rooms. TEFAF is such a unique fair for that,” he said.

The Giacomettis were also very much present on the design side, with several masterpieces featured in Galerie Lefebvre’s booth alongside Jean-Michel Frank’s iconic Pagoda table, also known as Queue d’Oiseau or Bird’s Tail, in an exceptionally rare shagreen version of a model more commonly made in oak. Only two shagreen examples have been traced in vintage documentation and located today: one made for American philanthropist and French Art Deco collector Templeton Crocker, and another photographed at the 1935 inauguration of Frank’s rue Saint-Honoré boutique. Notably, as provenance matters in design, this one comes from the Yves Saint Laurent collection; the other is in Jacques Grange’s collection.

Perhaps given recent strong design sales at auction, particularly in New York, decorative arts were very much present at TEFAF across historical and contemporary periods. Modernity sold Finn Juhl’s Dining Table Judas and Ole Wanscher’s Set of Six T-Chairs, both at asking prices of $115,000, and Carl Axel Acking’s Ceiling Lamp Model 981 for an asking price of $42,500.

There were plenty of gems of Modern French design as well, as in the booth of Galerie Chastel Maréchal from Paris, featuring Art Nouveau and early-century French designers that have recently been rising at auction, such as Jean Royère, Pierre Chareau, Line Vautrin and Andre Borderie. An absolute highlight in the booth was the Royère pair of “croisillon” armchairs, dated 1955, alongside Diego Giacometti’s Torsade coffee table, which sold on the preview day to an American collector.

Mixing design and art in a thoughtful, curated way, Salon 94 also staged another standout booth, conceived as an intimate tableau loosely inspired by Fernando Botero’s Paris bedroom, where John Kacere’s Marianne R, 1973, once hung above his bed. Anchored by Kacere’s photorealist painting, the booth brings together works by Shoko Suzuki, Tom Sachs and Ed Clark, creating a dialogue among seduction, material experimentation and domestic space, and previewing two major works by Ed Clark ahead of the gallery’s forthcoming exhibition.

Also in antiquities, Galerie Chenel sold a Roman marble Torso of a Man, dated to the 1st-2nd century A.D., alongside other Classical-age objects the gallery paired, as usual, with a good selection of Picasso ceramics. In jewelry, first-time TEFAF New York exhibitor FORMS had a very successful debut, including the sale of a standout pair of Diamond and Shakudo Sphere Earrings with 20.24 carat diamonds. Meanwhile, art jewelry gallery Didier Ltd. reported having sold several pieces to South American collectors, with prices ranging from $180,000 to $300,000, including Salvador Dalí’s The Persistence of Sound and Telephone Compact, and Alexander Calder’s Tiara Silver and Bracelet Silver.

Overall, the fair, now in its 12th New York edition, remains a marketplace for masterpieces, but also as a platform for contemporary spotlights, rising names and overlooked artists worth rediscovering. In each of its booths, history was not simply displayed but also written and recontextualized in real time, celebrating the excellence of human creativity across disciplines.

More in Art Fairs, Biennials and Triennials