The “Mona Lisa” suffered. Her smile has slipped, the green-brown dress of the Renaissance has become a kind of parero. The mysterious beauty resembles a stick figure, her body is made up of black brushstrokes and areas of color on a chalky background.
The picture by Vanni Spazzoli is offered for 7500 euros – an absolutely reasonable price for a canvas two meters high. The reason why one stands a bit perplexed in front of the exhibit by the painter, who was born in 1949, has to do with the setting at the art fair in Karlsruhe. The way through the exhibition halls to the booth of the gallery L’Ariete from Bologna is long and paved with so much art that one finally feels like the figure of Spazzoli: the criteria have slipped and amply dissolved.
A nail picture by Günther Uecker should cost 1.5 million euros
The Art Karlsruhe has a lot to celebrate. With the current edition, it is 20 years old and after a number of trade fairs in the past, alongside Art Cologne, it is one of the few major platforms for the art trade in Germany. Over 200 galleries, some international, are spread over four halls. And the fact that a gallery owner like Alexander Baumgarte from Bielefeld is showing a nail picture by Günther Uecker for almost 1.5 million euros at his stand proves the potential of the trade fair in the affluent south of the country.
However, size is not everything. Sure, it draws attention and documents the success of Ewald Karl Schrade, who founded Art Karlsruhe and made it big despite all misgivings. Now the gallery owner says goodbye to Baden. He was honored at the opening of the fair, a section of his own collection with works from Walter Stöhrer to Marion Eichmann fills a special exhibition in Hall 2 – right next to the solo presentation by Cornelia Slime, who was awarded the Hans Platschek Prize.
Prizewinner Cornelia Schlemme sets the painterly standards
Her wonderful portraits, which hang here and can also be purchased at the Galerie Ludorff stand at prices between 30,000 and 50,000 euros, are a benchmark for paintings that are based on concrete motifs and yet bid farewell to pure depiction. If you take slime as a model, you will encounter numerous artists from a younger, still inexpensive generation with similar qualities in Karlsruhe. But also a lot that doesn’t even touch this level. You can’t hide it: in the end you are fed up with such impressions, even annoyed. And longingly awaits stands such as those by Malte Uekermann (Berlin) with reduced, abstract motifs by Lothar Quinte.
The situation is similar with the galleries Mianki or Heike Strehlow from Frankfurt. The first paintings by Hendrik Zimmer, in which geometric bodies demonstrate their autonomy in fragile colors, were sold at the opening; a large canvas for around 15,000 euros attracted interested parties. The pictures of Anna Bittersohl in a booth at the fair (from 1100 euros), the aesthetically filtered search for clues by the Leipzig artist in abandoned architecture need more explanation – the gallery Eigenheim (Weimar/Berlin) is happy to provide them.
Bittersohl’s painting embodies the opportunity for discovery at Art Karlsruhe. They will be flanked by stars such as Gotthard Graubner (85,000 euros), Katharina Grosse (65,000 euros) and Hans Hartung (195,000 euros) at the Ludorff stand. In Hall 3 there are other dealers for the modern age: Maulberger, Koch from Hanover and Thole Rotermund (August Macke, Franz Marc, Lyonel Feininger). They effortlessly raise the fair to a level that makes it a magnet for collectors even after it has been handed over to the new director duo Olga Blass and Kristian Jarmuschek. But the two cannot avoid a relaunch. Reduction and concentration are imminent. Even if that should mean for 2024: “Honey, I shrunk the fair.”
