From the September 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.
The Grand Palais, the Beaux Arts exhibition hall off the Champs-Élysées, was opened for the Exposition Universelle of 1900. While FAB Paris, which this month is being held in the Grand Palais for the second year running, is not quite on the same scale, it does share with its forerunner a commitment to variety. Among a crowded field of Paris art fairs, ‘there is only one’, says FAB’s president, Louis de Bayser, ‘with such a large, general view of what is available on the market’.
Formed in 2022 as a merger of La Biennale des Antiquaires and Fine Art Paris, FAB brings together just under 100 dealers – of which 20 or so are newcomers this year – in paintings, drawings, decorative arts, furniture, rare books and more from antiquity to the present. Most of the galleries are Parisian, including the 18th-century specialist Galerie Léage, which is bringing a Louis XVI-era mantel clock decorated with late Ming celadon and golden cockerels; Galerie Jean-François Cazeau, with a Picasso painting from 1964 of a man’s head next to a seated nude; and Eric Coatalem, which has a striking profile portrait of a young man by the 17th-century painter Charles Mellin. The fair’s set-up encourages variety too, with many booths decorated in contrasting ways – a dealer in antique furniture, for example, might deck out the booth as an imitation of an 18th-century living room. Each of the booths, de Bayser says, ‘has its own ambience’, designed to grab visitors’ attention – unlike the often ‘cold’ uniformity of contemporary art fairs.
FAB is, of course, a commercial fair – when I ask him about the split between collectors and general attendees, de Bayser jokes that he hopes all 30,000 visitors could be collectors – but the non-selling displays are just as significant. One of these honours another illustrious event held partly in the Grand Palais: the Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes of 1925, which marked the beginning of art deco. A special centenary display by Galerie Vallois features 20 pieces of art deco furniture, the highlight being Eileen Gray’s ‘Dragons’ armchair (c. 1917–19), which in 2009 sold for €22m in the sale of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé’s collection, making it the world’s most expensive piece of 20th-century furniture.
FAB Paris takes place from 20–24 September at the Grand Palais (fabparis.com).
Gallery highlights
Dennis Creffield: Angels in the Architecture – Works on Paper 1958–2008
10–26 September
Portland Gallery, London
Dennis Creffield’s career-long ambition was to rescue drawing from the label of mere ‘painter’s aid’. Like Frank Auerbach, Creffield was a student of David Bomberg in the 1940s and his drawings – mostly in charcoal, many depicting churches – have a vigour that more than matches these better-known artists.
Georg Baselitz & Lucio Fontana: L’aurora viene
20 September–21 November
Thaddaeus Ropac, Milan
The first show at Thaddaeus Ropac’s newest gallery, in the Palazzo Belgioioso, Milan, brings together recent paintings and sculptures by the German painter Georg Baselitz and works by the spatialist artist Lucio Fontana from the mid 20th century. Baselitz, now 87, has long been fascinated by Fontana’s experimentation with form and shape in, for instance, the Fine di Dio series and his slashed canvases.
Freedom Rising: The Art of Owusu-Ankomah
4 September–4 November
October Gallery, London
Over the course of five decades, Owusu-Ankomah, who died in February, developed a distinctive style of painting in which he covered his large-scale canvases with Adinkra – glyphs that in Ghanaian culture represent objects, feelings or ideas. Over time, Owusu- Ankomah began creating his own symbols and adding them to his paintings. This show includes works from 2008–14.
Kaari Upson: House to Body Shift
17 September–1 November
Sprüth Magers, London
Houses are a constant in the work of the late Kaari Upson, from her long-term Larry Project (2005–12) to installations that incorporate elements from her childhood home. The first retrospective since her death
in 2021 is currently on at the Louisiana Museum in Denmark; this exhibition is a more focused look at Upson’s eclectic art.
Fairs in Focus
The Armory Show
5–7 November
Javits Center, New York
The recent history of New York’s longstanding Armory Show has been marked by change: it was bought by Frieze in 2023 and this year is taking place under a new director, Kyla McMillan. This month it returns to the vast Javits Center, with booths by more than 200 modern and contemporary galleries from around the world. Sections include Focus, which highlights artists from the American South, and Function, a new section dedicated to design.
Arte e Collezionismo a Roma
18–23 September
Palazzo Barberini, Rome
In 2023, the Antique Dealers Association of Italy held the first edition of Arte e Collezionismo at the Palazzo Brancaccio, in the hope of ‘revitalising’ Rome’s art market. This year, the fair has moved to the Palazzo Barberini, where it will host more than 60 exhibitors.
From the September 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.
