The fair will take place in the Palais Brongniart in the timeslot formerly occupied by Paris Tableau, the dedicated paintings fair that closed in 2015. It will be run by the same eight-man committee responsible for the Salon du Dessin, the works on paper fair held each spring in the same location.
Provisionally, they have space for around 34 stands “depending on who signs up”.
Talking to ATG, Louis de Bayser, president of the eight-man organising committee said: "The aim is to have a fair that is more or less the same in spirit as the Salon du Dessin or Paris Tableau but with a wider field of all the fine arts.”
He said it will be dedicated to fine art and will take in paintings, drawings and sculpture with no dateline “in the same way as the Salon where you can have drawings from the Renaissance or from the 20th century".
“The idea is not to have stands with only paintings, drawings or sculpture but for each to be a cabinet d'amateur mixing the three different arts in every stand.” De Bayser added that dealers may specialise in one discipline, such as drawings, but often have paintings and sculpture to offer as well.
Connoisseurial Appeal
De Bayser sees the fair's target audience as serious collectors and, he hopes, also the curators for whom the Salon du Dessin has gradually become a destination event.
Asked whether he sees his new fair as complementary or different to the Paris Biennale, which takes place in September 2017 and which this year incorporated many of Paris Tableau’s exhibitors, de Bayser said it was both.
“It is different because it is a fair for specialists, only for fine art dealers. But it is complementary because it enables dealers to show works that maybe they would not show at the Biennale – paintings or sculptures that are more for art connoisseurs and curators in the sense of being more complex works related to a specific field.”
He said the new fair will “work more or less in the same way as for the Salon”. However, practical differences include “the vetting which will be more widespread” and “the way the stands are organised because you have different sizes available”.
Dealers who had so far signed up for the fair include members of the committee such as de Bayser, Didier Aaron & Cie, Jean-François Baroni, Talabardon & Gautier and Terrades, but also other dealers including Art Cuellar Nathan, Galerie Malaquais, Jill Newhouse, Galerie de la Présidence, Artur Ramon Art and Trebosc & Van Lelyveld.
