With exhibitors including Theo Fennell, Hemmerle, Maserati and Jaeger-LeCoultre, and food provided by Le Caprice, Scott’s and the Ivy, the sixth edition of Masterpiece London (25 June-1 July, Royal Hospital, Chelsea), was all about the finer things in life. This included a broad range of fine art, from antiquities to contemporary, that sat comfortably in a tent designed and built by Stabilo, the company also responsible for the tent at Tefaf in Maastricht. Masterpiece does have a feel of the Dutch fair, but it is weighted much more towards the luxury arena and cross-collectors rather than museums and trade specialists. One of its strengths is its timing, said the Rome-based dealer Alessandra di Castro. “It coincides perfectly with the Impressionist and Modern auctions this week, post-war and contemporary next week and London Art Week—everybody is here.”
Below is a selection of highlights from some of the 2015 exhibitors.
Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale Venezia d’Argento (1961)
€4.5m
Mazzoleni Art
“The fair is of enormous quality and we’ve seen some dedicated collectors here,” said Luigi Mazzoleni, scion of the Turinese dealers and the head of their newly opened London branch. This work by Fontana is part of a series of 22, made between 1961 and 1962, that showed critics and admirers that the artist’s work was more than just the slashed canvases for which he is now so famous.
Robert Delaunay, La Ville de Paris, la Femme et la Tour Eiffel (1925), £3.9m
Dickinson
Visitors could not miss this oil on canvas at the centre of Dickinson’s stand, where—at around 4.5 metres tall—it towered above the rest of the works. Delaunay painted it for the 1925 Exposition International des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, where the term “Art Deco” became popular, earning this work the honour of being arguably one of the first Art Deco paintings ever.
Venus of Fourvière Hill (first century), £1.1m
Ariadne Galleries
The London and New York-based antiquities gallery brought this head of Venus, which was found buried in 1882 near Lyons, France, close to the convents of two religious orders, the Carmelite Sisters and the Visitation Sisters. “It’s very rare to know the exact provenance of a piece like this,” said Mark Merrony, the London gallery’s director. “It’s a great story: the head of the Roman goddess of love was found by the most chaste orders of nuns.”
Gio Ponti, table in walnut, lacquered wood and ground glass (around 1950), £120,000
Torso of an athlete, Roman (second century), £600,000
Alessandra di Castro and Valerio Turchi
The Roman dealers also shared a stand at last year’s edition of the fair, but this year, they mixed ancient and modern works rather than keeping them separate. “These days it’s all about putting the right pieces together,” Alessandra Di Castro said.
Jeroen Verhoeven, Lectori Salutem (2010), £200,000
Blain Southern
In line with its previous two presentations at Masterpiece, the contemporary art specialist Blain Southern presented a single-piece stand, featuring a work by the young Dutch artist and designer Jeroen Verhoeven. “There’s a slightly different demographic [than at a contemporary art fair],” said the gallery’s co-founder Graham Southern. “It’s more traditional, but the collectors here still have an interest in contemporary art.”
Saint James the Moor Killer (around 1500), £120,000
Sam Fogg
It’s very rare for a wooden sculpture of this kind to survive intact,” said Matthew Reeves, a director at Sam Fogg gallery, “especially with the original colouring.” This work, which was previously owned by the early 20th-century New York-based dealer Ercole Canessa, would have been found somewh ere along the pilgrimage route that led worshippers to Santiago de Compostela, in northern Spain.
Series of glass sculptures by Lino Tagliapietra (2000-present), around £30,000-£50,000
Mallett
Widely known and collected in the US and Italy, but relatively unknown in the UK, the Venetian glass sculptor Lino Tagliapietra’s work is always recognisable, especially his bird and dinosaur pieces. He is in talks with UK institutions to organise his first exhibition in the country, according to the gallery.