Category: FAIRS
FAIRS
Paris Photo 2023
DANIEL BLAU is pleased to present three exhibitions at Paris Photo 2023, each one a special insight into a particular and fascinating facet of photography.
Exceptional NASA Pictures
These photographs draw us into the extraordinary world of American space exploration in the 1960s and 70s. During this period of historically groundbreaking discovery, every achievement of the Space Race became a global sensation, and this once - fresh sense of wonder, awe and inspiration lives on in these photographs. They represent not only the significance of this period for scientific innovation, the advancement of technology and the furthering of mankind’s knowledge of the universe, but also the artistic capabilities of such phenomenal images to transport the viewer, instantly igniting emotion and curiosity.
Featuring photographs taken on such celebrated missions as (among others) Friendship 7, Gemini 4, Apollo 11 and Mariner 9, this exhibition takes us into the heart of the early space exploration. A photograph taken on the Apollo 11 crew’s return journey to Earth shows the Moon as it had never been seen before - a conquest of humanity, a glittering prize newly-won. The first ever EVA (extravehicular activity) – or spacewalk – performed by an American is shown in an oversized photograph of Ed White during Gemini 4. The palpable silence of the image reflects its wondrous subject, and the insufficiency of words to produce a response to the sight of it. Mariner 9’s photographs of the Martian surface describe another historically unprecedented encounter with the Solar System; as the first spacecraft ever to orbit another planet, its over 7,000 images of Mars reflect the ambition and intellectual hunger of NASA of this era. Another photograph in this exhibition was taken by John H. Glenn, Jr. during Friendship 7, the solo mission upon which, in February 1962, when became the first American to orbit the Earth. His color photograph of the brilliantly - lit space particles he famously described as ‘fireflies’, for lack of knowledge to explain them at the time, awakens the sense of fascinated mystery with which the world then viewed space, and which drove the determination of scientists to seek, scrutinize and attempt to ‘solve’ it.
Masterworks of Photo Retouching
The second of DANIEL BLAU’s exhibitions at this year’s Paris Photo showcases the striking and unusual effects of photo retouching in the 1930s, 40s and 50s.
During this time, the potential to alter the perceived meaning of a photograph was explored to thrilling effect. Retouching using a stylus could add detail, reinforce lines, enhance contrast and easily bring any element of the photograph to the fore. The introduction of gouache allowed dramatic emphasis to be created. Being so dark and impenetrable, it could also subtly obscure a photograph’s features as desired by the editor, or create impactful silhouettes, as we see in “Exercises”.
Among these photographs are also several amazing examples of the art of airbrush. A small, handheld tool that was originally invented in 1879 by the American Francis E. Stanley, the airbrush combines paint with blown air to enable a smooth, even application of pigment across a surface – a spraying technique which can be thought of as a precursor to the spray-paint canister of today. Stanley used the airbrush to colorize images, but it can also add entirely new visual elements to a photograph, as this exhibition demonstrates. For example, the light translucency of the airbrush used on “Normandy, France: Ours Not to Reason Why” gives the cross its ghostly, ethereal appearance, exquisitely embellishing both the subject matter and the artistic meaning of the image.
This curation of photographs exhibits the capacity of photo retouching to evoke a sense of the unexpected, of surprise, curiosity, imagination and experimentation, and to add layers of complex, nuanced messaging to captivating, existing photographs whether satirical, commercial, historical or political.
Daido Moriyama – New Works
This exhibition features 22 new paintings Japanese artist Daido Moriyama based on photographs he had taken in New York City in 1971. These pictures perfectly encapsulate Moriyama’s unmistakeable style of his trademark strong contrast. Here the artist achieves an incomparable sense of atmosphere by using his concept of are, bure, bokeh (meaning grainy, blurred and out of focus) to document his immediate surroundings – the everyday occurrences of New York City encountered by his camera.
Each canvas displays two consecutive exposures in a single negative, the result of Moriyama’s own modification of his 35mm camera; the artist chose these moments spontaneously but communicates them with much more consideration. By showing us each instant from two perspectives at once, Moriyama invites us closer to them, letting us begin to absorb whatever intangible, fleeting impulse it was that prompted him to take out his camera.
Download press release Paris Photo 2023
ONLINE VIEWING ROOM
PARIS PHOTO
Grand Palais Éphémère
Place Joffere
75007 Paris
Booth B14
Fair Dates:
Vernissage (by invitation only):
Opening Hours:
Wednesday,
November 8, 2023
5 pm – 9 pm
Public Opening:
November 9 – 11, 2023
Opening Hours:
1 pm – 8 pm
November 12, 2022
Opening Hours:
1 pm – 7 pm
Paris
The Occupation of Paris during World War II was a dark and harrowing time for the city and its people. For four years, Paris was under Nazi control, and the citizens endured hardship, deprivation, and constant fear. However, on August 25th, 1944, Parisians rose up against the occupying forces in what became known as the Liberation of Paris. The city was finally freed, and the resistance fighters, alongside Allied Forces, marched triumphantly through the streets.
The events of that historic day were captured by several photographers, providing a vivid and powerful representation of the city’s liberation.
Amongst them, those working for LIFE Magazine, are the focus of this exhibition.
Exhibition Dates:
exhibition at Galerie Meyer:
17, rue des Beaux-Arts
75006 Paris – France
Vernissage:
November 2, 2023
2:30 pm – 9:00 pm
Public Exhibition:
November 3 – 25, 2023
opening hours:
tuesday to friday
2:30 pm – 6:00 pm
and
saturdays
11:00 am – 1:00 pm,
2:30 pm – 7:00 pm
Download press release
Art Basel 2023
For ART Basel 2023, and the second part of the jubilee celebration for over 30 years of Blau at ART Basel, we are pleased to present a rich selection of renowned European and American artists. The online exhibition will include outstanding works by Ottone Rosai, Georg Baselitz, Antonius Höckelmannm Llyn Foulkes, Julian Schnabel, George Condo, Elaine Sturtevant and Hans Arp.
We look forward to seeing you in Basel.
Fair Dates:
Vernissage:
Wednesday, June 14, 2023
5 pm – 8 pm
Public Days:
June 15 – 18, 2023
11 am – 7 pm
Booth E15
Messeplatz 10
4005 Basel
Paris Photo 2022
DANIEL BLAU is pleased to present a trio of outstanding exhibitions at this year’s PARIS PHOTO. The renowned Munich gallery has emphasized photography since its foundation, and takes pride in its international reach and reputation and the range of contacts it has earned. This year, its contribution to PARIS PHOTO encompasses nearly 80 photographs, a tripartite arch spanning from early, massive cityscapes of Rome to wartime photographs capturing the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to the first, fascinating examples of photography from space. This is mankind at its most grandiose and monumental – but also at its most dangerous, and ominous.
The unbelievable happened in 1969. A spacecraft crewed by humans touched down on the moon. Even now, the moon landing, and the missions into space that led up to and succeeded it, retain their fascination for us. A curation of high-quality images, both in color and in black-and-white, are presented here as kaleidoscopic insight into the NASA missions of the late 1960s and ‘70s they document. It could be that even the photo-enthusiast public sees little special, today, in space photography, overwhelmed as it is by countless satellites sending back high-resolution glimpses into the cosmos. If we cast our thoughts back some 60 years, though, NASA’s photographs appear again in new light: the surface of the moon recorded by man, the earth photographed for the first time from that lunar surface, heavily historic and phenomenal images. From a scientific perspective, of course, these missions, of an era already receding into memory, gained mankind a wealth of new information and ways of understanding the universe around us. The stillness, though, the endless quiet of these photographs, the play of light and shadow on another world and beyond our ken, the colors glistening off the horizons of other planets and into boundless space – these are artworks, pure, and fascinating moments in the history of photography.
The exhibition “KRONOS” features photographs taken on December 7th, 1941, of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The photographic propaganda material that helped define perceptions of the surprise attack stemmed from unlikely sources, from snapshots and the corners of unintentionally well-timed holiday memories. An otherwise innocuous beach scene contains a massive explosion; a section of Pearl Harbor is found in a birds-eye overview. We see concentric waves making their way towards a row of ships – in only a moment the waves’ torpedo will strike one. Daniel Blau has assembled an important collection of photographs, from multiple origins and a wide variety of techniques, documenting the attack. U.S. Navy photographers and rarely represented Imperial Japanese Army photographers are displayed alongside one another for the first time. What results is a haunting window into one brief instant in time, the historic flash of an unanticipated, world-altering attack, into the very nature of war photography and propaganda, and into the artistry and philosophical perspectives at play between explosions and snapping shutters.
One more highlight of this year’s presentation brings us into the classical past and before a different sort of grandeur, a monumental modern image of an antique monument. The largest enclosed building of the ancient world, the Roman Colosseum, was captured in photography by the Roman urban photographers Tommaso Cuccioni (1790-1864) and Giuseppe Ninci (1823-1890). The building itself dates to AD 79; the print is the earliest dated work our gallery is showing at Paris Photo, and one of the earliest large-format architectural photographs of any kind. It is an unusual piece of art, an albumen print almost 1.5 meters wide and executed in three parts. Ninci learned the craft of photography in Cuccioni’s studio, opening his own around 1866 not far from the Spanish Steps. Both photographers were known for their oversized topographic images of the Eternal City, as spectacular in their own right as the ancient edifices themselves are.
PARIS PHOTO
Grand Palais Éphémère
Place Joffere
75007 Paris
Booth B14
Fair Dates:
Vernissage (by invitation only):
Opening Hours:
Wednesday,
November 9, 2022
3 pm – 9 pm
Public Opening:
November 10 – 12, 2022
Opening Hours:
1 pm – 8 pm
November 13, 2022
Opening Hours:
1 pm – 7 pm
Tondo
DANIEL BLAU is pleased to present “TONDO,” a truly unique exhibition of vintage pictures connected by their unusually well-rounded focus, for the PhotoSaintGermain Festival 2022.
The 23 photographs featured in the Anthony Meyer rooms, stretching in origin all the way back to the earliest days of the artform in the early nineteenth century, range from cityscape to portraiture, from images of far-off lunar craters to the architectural gems around us. What unifies them all is, of course, roundness, whether in their subject matter, in the technology behind them, or in the framing of the very photograph itself.
Tondi have an age-old place in art history, and with the advent of photography took a step into the modern world as well. Experimentation in roundness has been present from the first lens down through the innovation of the fisheye in the 1960s and ‘70s, reflecting the zeitgeist and aesthetic impulses of every generation from Voigtländer to Nikon. Here, DANIEL BLAU, together with SERGE PLANTUREUX, has brought together an extraordinary curation of roundness through the decades, outstanding work that encompasses historic milestones and natural timelessness, anonymous faces and monumental profiles. Lightning watchers at the Empire State are frozen in time by John Alger, beside Alvin Landon Coburn’s view of colleague Alfred Stieglitz.
“What is the aesthetic beauty of a circle? – or of a turning, curving movement,” DANIEL BLAU asks, in a recently published discussion between the two experts behind the exhibit. “Isn’t it something that is quite natural to us? Beginning with the iris being round, and the eye being round like a sphere, and the head being roundish, the sun and the moon being round… we are surrounded by all these spherical, and seemingly circular objects.” The reflection on and consideration of roundness is itself an endless one, always circling back upon itself, wherever we begin – the possibility, the potential, the resources, the subjects, the history, the technology, the very shape itself. Unusual as it can seem at first, the circle in photography is there at every turn.
The exhibition “TONDO” will be held in the Anthony Meyer Rooms at PhotoSaintGermain between November 3rd and 19th, 2022.
Exhibition Dates:
November 3rd – 19th, 2022
opening hours:
tuesday to friday
2:30 pm – 6:00 pm
and
saturdays
11:00 am – 1:00 pm
exhibition at Galerie Meyer:
17, rue des Beaux-Arts
75006 Paris – France
Art Basel 2022
The 1980s, important years in painting, have always been a point of focus at DANIEL BLAU. On the occasion of our 30th anniversary exhibition at Art Basel, we will show highlights of our program, featuring works by renowned artists including Georg Baselitz (*1938), Alfred Jensen (1903-1981), Francis Gruber (1912-1948), Carl Fredrik Hill (1849-1911), Anselm Kiefer (*1945), Eugène Leroy (1910-2000), Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997), Emilio Vedova (1919-2006) and Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Our exhibition will focus on the 1980s, with a large untitled gestural painting by Vedova from 1983 and a colorful brush stroke painting “The Old Tree” by Lichtenstein from the following year, complemented by the “Adlerkopf” painted by Baselitz (1986). Alongside these grandmasters, some artists working outside the main-stream are also of interest, such as Hill, Gruber and Jensen, who have been so influential to modern and contemporary artists alike. Hill, who had an academic education in Paris, almost exclusively used pencil and paper after his nervous breakdown in 1878, producing a large body of works on paper, which have been inspirational to artists ever since, will be exhibited for the first time at Art Basel. The French Francis Gruber and Swedish Evert Lundquist are two further artists lesser known to the general public but heroes within the art community. Gruber, who unfortunately died at the age of 36, will also be shown at Art Basel for the first time. Further on view are drawings by Kiefer, Baselitz, Polke and Warhol.
We look forward to seeing you in Basel.
Fair Dates:
Privat Days:
June 14 – 15, 2022
11 am – 8 pm
Vernissage:
Wednesday, June 15, 2022
5 pm – 8 pm
Public Days:
June 16 – 19, 2022
11 am – 7 pm
Booth E15
Messeplatz 10
4005 Basel
Paris Photo 2021
Pioneers
DANIEL BLAU is pleased to present four special exhibitions at Paris Photo 2021, covering three centuries of photographic history.
Dating back to the middle of the nineteenth century, our earliest items were created by photographic pioneer Louis Alphonse Poitevin, a man whose life’s work enriched both the artistic and the technological development of the young art form. Through years of chemical experimentation he devised a procedure allowing him to print and distribute his images in mass‑market books. Having grasped the potential of photographic images as a form of mass media at a very early stage in the history of photography, Poitevin finds himself spoken of today alongside his colleagues Daguerre and Niépce, one of the “troisième homme de la photographie”.
The outstanding examples of his work that Daniel Blau is presenting at Paris Photo are noteworthy for their technical mastery within their historical context, their remarkable attention to detail, and their pure artistic value.
A catalogue of Alphonse Poitevin’s works is being published to accompany this exhibition.
The second exhibition we will show at Paris Photo is a collection of original vintage NASA prints. Works include remarkable photographs from a range of twentieth century space missions, notably the Apollo XI moon landing in 1969 as well as the earlier Apollo VIII mission, which successfully orbited the moon before returning to Earth. The ‘Earthrise’ photographs of our planet taken from space are among the most beautiful and affecting of those from the space programmes Striking color photographs from Voyager missions to the outer reaches of our solar system feature the vivid details of Saturn’s rings and Jupiter’s red spot. We will also show the first color photo taken on Mars, produced by NASA’s Viking Lander. Accompanying the NASA pictures are photos from the Soviet Zond programme – a series of robotic spacecraft launched between 1964 and 1970. Originally created for purposes of documentation and scientific enquiry, these pictures are now valued for their artistic merits as well as their historical significance.
The third exhibition we will be presenting at Paris Photo 2021 is a collection of rare photographs focusing on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. These images speak to one of the most devastating military decisions in history, from both a Japanese and an American perspective. Yosuke Yamahata’s photographs of August 9, 1945
offer us a unique fi rsthand insight into a city’s total destruction, and the fate of the men and women who lived through it. This exhibition is also being accompanied by a publication.
A true highlight of our offerings this year is twin set of contemporary photographs from Blau Gallery’s own Sofia Valiente, the winner of Daniel Blau’s young photographers 5 Under 30 competition in 2015. Her projects “Miracle Village” and “Foreverglades” are accompanied by photo books available at our booth. For “Miracle Village,” the artist lived among registered sex offenders in a rural Florida community. Her report from that time includes photographs
and handwritten testimonies from the residents. “Foreverglades” brings stories from the Florida Everglades and the state’s pioneer past to new light. Sofia’s work has been featured in publications including Time, The Guardian, El Mundo, Vice and American Photo Magazine, and has been exhibited in London, New York and Paris. In 2015, she received the World Press Photo award for “Miracle Village” (1st prize, portraits, stories), the South Florida Cultural Consortium Artist Fellowship, and Burn Magazine’s Young Talent Award. “Miracle Village” and “Foreverglades” are also accompanied by a booklet.
NEW LOCATION !!
PARIS PHOTO
Grand Palais Ephemere
Champs de Mars
75007 Paris
Booth B14
Fair Dates:
Vernissage:
Wednesday,
November 10, 2021
11 pm – 9 pm
Public Opening:
Thursday,
November 11 – 14, 2021
Opening Hours:
Daily: 12 am to 8 pm
Art Basel 2021
DANIEL BLAU is pleased to present an exhibition of modern and contemporary work by renowned international artists at Art Basel 2021. The show encompasses multiple media, from works on paper to oil paintings on canvas and stained-glass compositions.
Among the highlights is a selection of ink line drawings by Andy Warhol (1928-1987), presented here in stunning antique frames. His exceptional draughtsmanship and interest in the human form is visible in these early works from the ‘50s. Warhol’s drawings have been the focus of ever-growing attention in recent years, receiving widespread acclaim after a number of high-profile museum exhibitions, and we are pleased to bring them now to our Art Basel audience.
A number of contemporary artists, including Billy Al Bengston (b. 1934), Markus Lüpertz (b. 1941) and Georg Baselitz (b. 1938), will be exhibited through DANIEL BLAU as well. We are excited to be the first gallery to present a Bengston painting at Art Basel: his large, boldly colored 1981 Malu Draculas. It is a piece highly typical of Bengston, whose vivid watercolour and paper collages evoke the warm Pacific landscapes of his home, of the Californian and Hawai’ian earth, ocean, and sky he lives and works among.
The discovery of the “Dithyramb” – a term from the poetics of the antique world, originally denoting a form of song in praise of Dionysus, god of wine, and which has come in common parlance to describe an attitude of exuberance towards life, of a passionate ‘inspiration’ and ‘drunkenness’ – marks the beginning of Markus Lüpertz’s painting career. His thick brushstrokes lash out at the viewer from the large, two-meter canvas in the striking example exhibited here, Weintraube (Dithyrambisch), granting his subject – an otherwise ordinary bunch of grapes – a truly monumental quality.
Baselitz’s hand is immediately recognisable for the swift, confident strokes that characterise all of his work, from sculptures and paintings to more intimate paper-based art. On exhibition will be a first state proof (from an edition consisting of nine diverse prints) of one of his first, gigantic linocuts. Here, as in countless other works, the artist’s wife, Elke, acts as his subject and muse.
Also on display are two stained-glass windows by Neal Fox (b. 1981), whose colorful and highly detailed work takes a special delight in the musical and countercultural universes it references and asks us to revel in too.
A rare example from Kirkeby’s transitional period, a boldly painted eagle head referencing American Pop and Abstract Expressionist artists like Rauschenberg.
Eugène Leroy is a much-overlooked master of texture and light on canvas.
ar. Penck is present in one of his rare early canvases which at the time had to be smuggled out of East Germany – by unstretching them and folding them to fit in the trunk of a car to be exhibited on the western side of the iron curtain.
Fair Dates:
Vernissage:
September 20 – 23, 2021
11 am – 8 pm
Public Days:
September 24 – 26, 2021
11 am – 7 pm
Booth F10
Messeplatz 10
4005 Basel
Grapes Lost and Found
In a recent conversation I had with Billy Al Bengston, he quoted his racing buddy: “If it only costs money, it’s cheap.” Being an avid collector myself (although not of Contemporary Art) my interpretation of his words is: It can take a lot of effort, time and money to track down a specific object. Sometimes it can take years and money can’t help.
We had an exhibition of large Lüpertz paintings from 1967-70 at Art Basel in 2005. The paintings were huge. The show looked stunning and was a great success. The painting “Weintrauben” did not find a place in the show of tree trunks, telegraph poles and tunnels and remained upstairs in storage to return with the other works to Germany after the fair. But it never arrived. We only realised it had gone missing about a year later when a loan request for the work came and we couldn’t locate it.
Now 15 years later a friend sends me this cryptic text message: “Dear Daniel, tell me, are you missing a grape painting? I hope you are well. Best wishes…”
It turns out that the crate with our label still on it mysteriously turned up in a private furniture warehouse in Munich. The owner of that warehouse is a friend of our friend. I thought “Great! The grapes are back.” But then the finder emailed: “How can I be sure you are the owner? I think I’d better go to the police.” Days of silence followed. The painting had vanished again. Then somebody within the city’s Lost and Found department called up. He had been referred to us by the Lenbachhaus, and wondered if we dealt in Lüpertz? “There is this painting someone found…”
I am sure that many of the artworks we enjoy today would have fascinating stories to tell, if only they could speak to us in words as well as with their beauty. I thought this lucky moment merited a presentation on the theme of flora and colour.
Karl-Heinz Schwind was our first exhibition when we opened some 30 years ago. His works are pure energy.
Eugène Leroy, who sometimes worked for several years on a painting before considering it finished, Don van Vliet, cult musician and painter and Billy Al Bengston, known for his tropical themes and vivid colors, are well known and do not need my introduction.
David Byrd is neither “Insider” nor “Outsider”. Having studied art after WWII under Amédée Ozenfant he only developed his mature style and produced his most defining body of work after he started working as an orderly at a hospital psychiatric ward, from 1958-88.
His paintings defy any of the “Isms” we usually like to apply to art we see; they stand apart from Pop, Realism or Expressionism. If anything I would refer to his work as New York Surrealism. Byrd’s works have an airy and somewhat evanescent quality, as if viewed through a milky glass.
Guerle and Nény were true self-taught artists who remained more or less in obscurity but whose visual languages are equally inspiring and distinctive as the better-known artists in our exhibition. They only came to my attention through writers like Hans Prinzhorn or Dr. Jean Lacassagne, who were interested in and propagated the artistic output of mentally insane or criminal individuals. Prinzhorn’s Bildnerei der Geisteskranken (Berlin 1922) and Albums du Crocodile by Lacassagne (Lyon 1939) have been rare sources of information on these fascinating artists.
Register for Online Viewing Room here
Foreverglades by Sofia Valiente
Daniel Blau is thrilled to present Foreverglades – a major new project by interdisciplinary artist Sofia Valiente. The exhibition brings stories of the Glades and Florida’s pioneer history to new light through a series of contemporary photographs displayed inside a 41-foot replica of a steamboat and published in a unique photo book.
Valiente’s artistic work is driven and distinguished by lengthy periods of rigorous field research that involve her living within the communities she photographs. Foreverglades has emerged from a period of five years of personal experience and research in the Glades.
We are delighted to bring Foreverglades to local and international audiences in New York, where it will be on view on Pier 94 during Paris Photo NY.
The book is available through Sofia Valientes website. Click here
Fair Dates:
Paris Photo New York
Pier 94
711 12th Ave, New York City,
NY 10019
(car access from 55th St /12th Ave)
Paris Photo New York officially postponed
A new date will be announced as soon as possible
“Foreverglades. Swamp to Sugar Bowl:Pioneer Days in Belle Glade”
+49 89 29 73 42