40th Art Basel show

Hall 2.0 booth M2, Messe Platz, Basel, Switzerland

Exposition passéeDu 10 au 14 juin 2009

Dear friends,

We promised to keep you up to date on our recent activities.

First, the good news is that we’re doing fine.

In New York, the Armory Show was a real disaster : a blizzard marred the opening. Despite better weather in the following days, we sold only one work, on the evening the very last day : not much consolation. Many colleagues experienced the same situation.

Between New York and Paris we hosted a handsome show of work by Sigurd Rompza and Yves Popet which met with some success. Since people don’t always come to a snap decision, our policy of featuring these same artists at Art Paris allowed an American couple to finally opt for a large Popet. Art Paris was already proving more profitable, and the fair went quite well, although we’re not crowing from the rooftops.

We have just returned for Cologne, and despite our fears and the pessimism of the German press, we were surprised by the appreciation German collectors displayed at our return to Cologne. We even had the pleasure of seeing friends we hadn’t seen since the end of the Frankfurt fair. Compared to the two other fairs, the Cologne show was a big success : Rompza did well, as did Prosi, one of whose large white canvases was purchased for a museum. Prosi’s current exhibition is also doing very well, since all the large canvases and a few of the smaller works have been sold, and the show isn’t even over yet !

We’re now working flat out on two upcoming exhibitions : Klagenfurt/Austria(opening June 3rd) and Reigel/Germany. The theme for both shows is Victor Vasarely and art construit in France from 1950 to the present, allowing us to demonstrate the current vigor of the geometric/constructed school in France by featuring not only Marcelle Cahn, Jean Dewasne, Jean Gorin, Auguste Herbin, and Alberto Magnelli but also Charles Bézie, Jean-Gabriel Coignet, Jean-François Dubreuil and all the rest. We are shipping some one hundred works in all. And we’ll still working with Würzburg on the Auguste Herbin exhibition scheduled for the autumn.

For our fortieth anniversary at the Art Basel fair we are presenting a retrospective selection. Our first participation there was a solo show of Jean Dewasne’s work, with his anti-sculptures and a 14-meter-long series called The Long March. In the book to be published at this year’s fair I describe how I and my husband were still nailing our stand past the opening time in order to create a sweep of wooden waves that allowed us to show the series in its entirety. This year’s stand at Basel will therefore be composed of large, fine works by Dewasne, as well as a major Aurélie Nemours and works by Auguste Herbin and Victor Vasarely, not forgetting new work by contemporary artists such as Jean-François Dubreuil, Henri Prosi, Yves Popet and Sigurd Rompza.

Our new motto is, YES WE COULD… WITH YOU ! We look forward to seeing you on our stand.

Warm regards,

Anne et Jean-Claude Lahumière

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40th Art Basel show . Hall 2.0 booth M2, Messe Platz, Basel, Switzerland

Hall 2.0, booth M2, Messeplatz, Basel, Switzerland