Heinz Mack’s ceramic works, including Untitled (1997) are on show at Eggeling International Fine Art’s stand at Independent 20th Century
© Archive Heinz Mack
“The global south is very much the conversation right now,” says Elizabeth Dee, the founder of the Independent art fair and its younger sister expo, Independent 20th Century. The fair’s third edition in the historic Battery Maritime Building, with Dee at the helm and Matthew Higgs as founding curatorial adviser, is distinguished from its contemporary art sister fair by its focus on artists who were active in the 20th century.
Since its launch in 2022, the fair has focused on challenging the eurocentricity of the period by bringing marginalised voices of the recent past back into the conversation, juxtaposing pieces by lesser-known artists with under-exposed bodies of work by canonical artists. This year, several dominant themes are apparent, including a preponderance of Surrealist art as well as US art from the 1950s. But the main point of interest, according to Dee, is the Latin diaspora. “One of the biggest contributions we are making is spotlighting this unwritten history,” she says, citing the influence of Adriano Pedrosa’s central exhibition at this year’s Venice Biennale, the first organised by a curator from Latin America.
Nearly half of the fair’s 32 exhibitors are newcomers, including Gomide&Co and Galerie MaPa, both based in São Paulo. Gomide&Co’s stand will pair works by the Paraguayan Indigenous artist Julia Isídrez (whose work is also included in the Venice Biennale) with pieces by the African Brazilian artist Maria Lira Marques. Both explore anthropomorphism through ceramics; Isídrez uses pre-Columbian techniques, such as creating a black patina on her sculptures with the smoke of burning mango leaves.
At Galerie MaPa’s stand, the influential African Brazilian activist and artist Abdias do Nascimento will have his posthumous New York debut. A famous civil rights champion for Black Brazilians, Nascimento moved to New York in the 1960s during a self-imposed political exile from Rio de Janeiro, where he started to paint. The works, in turn, explore themes of African Brazilian liberation and freedom. Alongside the art will be a series of traditional Latin American worship objects integral to his practice.
Visitors at the 2023 edition of Independent 20th Century Courtesy Independent
Two Brazilian galleries, Galatea and Simões de Assis, will devote their shared stand to the work of Heitor dos Prazeres, another multi-hyphenate African Brazilian artist whose work is steeped in the cultural diasporic vibrancy of mid-century Rio. Dos Prazeres, a founder and pioneer of samba, captured the energy of the dance form in dynamic, frieze-like compositions depicting scenes from everyday life.
Another first-time exhibition at the fair, Alison Jacques Gallery from London, will show the meditative weavings of Lenore Tawney, the influential fibre and assemblage artist who was heavily inspired by Buddhism. Tawney was part of the New York artistic community in the 1960s alongside Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin and Jasper Johns. The gallery worked with the artist’s estate in New York and one of the leading scholars of Tawney’s work to organise a comprehensive presentation for its stand.
Independent 20th Century’s ethos of broadening the canon is perhaps best encompassed by OSMOS gallery’s presentation devoted to Richard Bell. Through painting, the Australian Aboriginal activist and artist challenges the white and Western constructs embedded in the art world. “We want to restore and rectify these histories,” says Dee.
As per tradition, the fair will also feature plenty of artists long-inscribed in the history books; “We’ve done most of our million-dollar sales at the 20th Century edition,” Dee adds. True to the fair’s ethos of refraining from the overly familiar, the big-name presentations focus on those artists’ lesser-known practices. John Szoke Gallery will survey Picasso’s printmaking practice, while Beck & Eggeling International Fine Art will devote its stand to Heinz Mack’s ceramics.
