THE ART NEWSPAPER – 10.03.2015

“Night Fishing” is unlikely to reinvent Tefaf as a contemporary fair, and nor is it supposed to. But the inclusion of artists such as Markus Raetz, whose work is scarce on the secondary market, is a coup. According to Farideh Cadot, his main dealer, the Swiss artist has not shown his sculptures at an art fair for more than 20 years. She approached Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain (Fiac) last year to see if the Paris-based fair would be interested in showing a part-selling exhibition of Raetz’s work, but says that the idea was rejected by the event’s organisers.

Cadot is somewhat reticent about fairs. “We are not in every international show and art fair; for us, it is not about big names and bling. We are from a generation that was intellectually against these kinds of things,” she says.

Such is the demand for Raetz’s work (Cadot says there are between ten and 15 people waiting for each piece) that, as we went to press, only one of the four sculptures on show at Tefaf was likely to be for sale. Cadot says that she is borrowing at least two works, which will not be for sale, from a French private collection. Prices for Raetz’s sculptures range from €200,000 to €250,000.

par Anny Shaw