8 Highlights of the IFPDA Print Fair 2024

The International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) Print Fair made a triumphant return to the historic Park Avenue Armory for its 31st edition on Thursday evening, signaling a notable shift in both location and scheduling after two consecutive fall editions at the Javits Center. The move not only heralds a welcome return to the beloved venue—where the Print Fair was previously held for 25 years—but also underscores the impressive agility and passion of fair organizers and exhibitors alike, given that the last edition was less than four months ago.

This fervor was palpable from the start of the VIP opening, which drew enthusiastic throngs of collectors, curators, artists, and enthusiasts. The doors had barely opened at 5 p.m. when an impressive crowd began to swell within the Armory’s aisles, eventually forming a queue that snaked outside into the brisk evening, all attendees eager to dive into the thoughtfully curated showcase of fine prints.

Typically, the Print Fair is distinguished in its extraordinary spectrum of works on view—and this year is no different. Highlights run the gamut of art history and printmaking techniques, from a commanding, wall-sized woodcut mural by the Renaissance maestro Titian to a fresh, 12-color lithograph by up-and-coming artist Jarvis Boyland. Indeed, there’s no shortage of gems to admire and acquire at this edition of the Print Fair, which runs through Sunday, February 18th.

Here, we share 8 highlights of the IFPDA Print Fair 2024.

Jarvis Boyland at Tamarind Institute

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The Albuquerque-based Tamarind Institute, located at the College of Fine Arts at the University of New Mexico, runs a fantastic residency program that invites contemporary artists to spend two weeks to a month honing their printmaking skills. This 12-color lithograph by Jarvis Boyland—which one needs to see in person to fully appreciate—came from his residency in February 2023. Debuting at the fair, the work successfully combines the visual language of religious iconography with a contemporary figure and practically glows from the deft draftsmanship, plus the use of color and technique.

Gallery director Kylee Aragon Wallis noted that Boyland had never done lithography before but threw himself into the task; he even went on to take a lithography course afterward, back at UCLA, where he is an MFA student. Boyland is having a moment in New York—he just opened a new two-person show at Deli Gallery, and his work is currently featured in the major exhibition “Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys” at the Brooklyn Museum. At $3,000, this dazzling piece, an edition of 30, is an enticing opportunity to collect the fast-rising artist’s work.

Vija Celmins and Toba Khedoori at David Zwirner

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Opposite a suite of shiny Gerhard Richters, David Zwirner’s booth offers a serene pairing of two contemporary greats: Vija Celmins and Toba Khedoori. Following the latter artist’s spectacular show of painting and drawing at the gallery in New York this past fall, two remarkable prints are on view at the Print Fair: Untitled (grass) (2022), a towering, minimal etching made of up fine lines that make up tall, sweeping blades of grass; and Untitled (branches) (2020), a three-color lithograph embedded with fine detail so soft and intricate that its web of angular branches feels ethereal (both works were published by the printmaking workshop and publisher Gemini G.E.L.). Celmins’s legendary depictions of sea, sky, and land are on their own level of incredible detail and reverence for nature. It’s a compelling conversation to see both artists’ prints side by side—a meeting of two technical masters who elevate the earthly to the otherworldly.

Katherine Bradford at JRP Editions

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Fans of New York–based painter Katherine Bradford will be delighted to see three brand-new monotypes and a lithograph that the artist began working on in October to debut at the fair. The fresh, color-soaked works continue her series of joyful swimmers and divers poetically navigating deep blue and purple waters. Notably, the artist’s handling of paint and use of light translate wonderfully to the medium, which carries bold color and picks up on soft brush strokes. Each monotype differs in color and some even use different paper (one was printed on a lavender-colored sheet). The monotypes are priced at $7,000 or $7,500 (two are an edition of nine and one is an edition of 15), while the lithograph Looking Out to Sea (2024) is an edition of 75, priced at $3,500. All were selling quickly on VIP day.

Louise Bourgeois at Carolina Nitsch Contemporary Art

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The esteemed Carolina Nitsch started working with Louise Bourgeois around 2000 and went on to become the primary dealer for the late artist’s prints and multiples. The gallery’s Print Fair booth is a testament to Nitsch’s dedication to the artist, filled with a wide range of Bourgeois’s output—from “The Puritan Suite,” an illustrated book with text and watercolor from 1947, which is being sold for $385,000; to a striking 2008 textile piece called The Good Mother, which shows a mother figure in red ink with an upside-down child in her belly, plus sprays of aluminum applique on top. The artist’s signature imagery in black, white, blue, and red is on full view, from humorous, shapely torsos to spindly spiders and spirals.

Tom Hammick at Galerie Boisserée

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The Cologne-based Galerie Boisserée presents within its booth a survey of prints and paintings by British artist Tom Hammick, who is equally skilled in both disciplines. In a text accompanying the presentation, Hammock explained that for years he worried about splitting his time between printmaking and painting, though that’s no longer a concern. “In my lifetime, the more experimental and ambitious aspects of printmaking has seen the medium rise from something that was rather looked down on, especially in Britain, to one, in many contexts, that now has an equal footing with painting,” wrote the artist. And his presentation at the Print Fair certainly proves this.

With a range of works from 2019 to 2023, some of which are debuting at the fair, the full breadth of Hammick’s expertise is on view, seen in large new painted woodcuts filled with botanicals with a shadow hovering above, as well as etchings and paintings of seascapes and nighttime scenes that display an electric use of color. In fact, the artist often prints each edition in different colors, lending each one its own character. Prices range from under €2,000 to €21,000 (under $2,150 to $22,500).

Joan Mitchell at F.L. Braswell Fine Art

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The Chicago-based F.L. Braswell Fine Art presents a printmaking retrospective of one of its hometown’s greatest 20th-century masters: Joan Mitchell. Gallerist Freeman L. Braswell noted that the works on view represent the spectrum of Mitchell’s body of work in printmaking—from her very first Abstract Expressionist prints made in 1959, to the lithographs she made in Paris in 1992, the same year that she died.

Standout works include a trio of “Sunflower” etchings from the 1970s, made with Parisian printer Maeght, as well as trial proofs for screenprints that would illustrate a 1960 book of John Asbury poems. Works range in price from $7,000 for screenprints to $75,00 for a large two-part lithograph.

Jeffrey Gibson at Portland Art Museum | SITE Santa Fe

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It’s rare to become a patron of history-making contemporary art, but that opportunity is on the table at IFPDA. Jeffrey Gibson, who will represent the United States at the Venice Biennale, has created a limited-edition cashmere blanket that is being sold to support the pavilion. Each blanket of the edition of 60, priced at $7,500, is signed by the artist on a painted square, a piece of a larger canvas, that is sewn into one corner.

The blanket is inspired by a flag Gibson created for a performance in 2021 and features his signature use of graphic pattern and bold color, with a message overlaid in his handwriting: “I feel real when you hold me.” This message, he explained, is “just my thinking about blankets and wrapping things, but also my relationship both to people and objects. Many North American collections contain objects that have been removed from their communities. The most important this that people do when they are reunited with these objects is hold them.” The initiative is presented by the Portland Art Museum and SITE Santa Fe, the commissioners of the United States pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and the edition was published by Sharon Coplan Hurowitz for Sotheby’s.

Albrecht Dürer at David Tunick Inc.

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