At the fair

Messy beauty: art and collecting at FAB Paris

The international event for collectors of antique and 20th century art also offered jewellery, desing and non-western art, price ranges for all budgets

by Giovanni Gasparini

24 September 2025

FAB Paris 2025 at the Grand Palais Tanguy de Montesson

7' min read

Key points

Disorderly Beauties: One Curator for Five Galleries
The Italian presence
Strong offering of 20th century works
Painting, Engraving and Sculpture through the Centuries
Sculpture and design

7' min read

On 19 September, the Fine Art Paris fair opened for the second time in the large space of the Grand Palais, with a new date in the crowded and competitive calendar of post-summer fairs. The fair, open until 24 September, aims to be an international appointment for collectors of antique and 20th century art, and objects of Western and non-Western traditions, following a transversal approach of free associations and visual collaborations, thanks to a hundred or so galleries and exhibitors of different categories, which include a strong presence of unique jewellery and works of furniture and design, as well as a core of paintings and sculpture from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. The presence of Parisian and French-speaking galleries is prevalent, although Spanish, German, British, North American and Italian dealers are also present.
The impression is that most of the works on offer fall below the €100,000 threshold, with the exception of 20th century art, which is below half a million (all prices quoted are asking prices, usually with taxes and costs aside). The common element is the qualitative choice and care of presentation that characterises practically all the stands; many gallerists are leading names, also known from their participation in Tefaf Maastricht, with 21 new participations out of 91 galleries, among them Landau Fine Art from Montreal.

Dinamismo dalla danza africana, 1932 Galleria Frascione (Firenze)

Disorderly Beauties: one curator for five galleries

A space shared by five galleries best represents the spirit of inter-category collecting that animates the fair, named Beautes desordonnees by curator Jean-Hubert Martin. The curator has brought together 138 works from five distinct areas: Galerie Bruno de Laroussilhe for medieval art, Galerie 1900-2000 for 20th century avant-garde, Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois for modern and contemporary, Galerie Claes for non-western arts, and the Librairie Clavreuil for books and prints. The visual associations given by the proximity of such different objects and cultures are stimulating and suggest to collectors to step out of their self-imposed 'boxes': thus a large canvas byJacques Villeglé from 1962 (at €130k) forms the backdrop to a thirteenth-century Capitello con Sirene (asking €240k), overlooked by 2018's 'Paloma de guerra', a stuffed dove with a bullet in its beak by contemporary Pilar Albarracin, offered at €8k.Disorderly Beauties: one curator for five galleries

There was a strong presence of Surrealist works, including a paper by Max Ernst at €85,000, and paintings by Hans Bellmer, Oscar Dominguez and Hanna Hoch (asking prices in the hundreds of thousands of euro), and a focus on erotic art with prices starting at a few tens of thousands of euro for the scandalous images of Pierre Molinier.

The presence of sculpture ranged from a Limousin Corpus Christ (€150,000) and a 14th-century wooden sculpture of a French saint at €230,000 to hyper-realistic female nude mannequins byJohn De Andrea at €140,000 and a Yaoure' mask from the Ivory Coast at €75,000. Prices in the tens of thousands also for books and works on paper, including engravings by Goya (€85,000) and Hans Holbein (€25,000). An experiment that will hopefully also meet with commercial success and can be replicated on a larger scale.

Arte precolombiana da Galerie Furstenberg

The Italian presence

There are only two Italian galleries present, perhaps also due to a concurrent fair in Rome, when it would be desirable to have more coordination of calendars between fairs to avoid overlapping. The Frascione gallery in Florence is often present in the French market and presents an interesting selection of works with a focus on the early 20th century starting at a few thousand euros, and brings three Futurist works including a well-known paper by Thayaht 'The Great Helmsman' of 1939 dedicated to the athletic transflight of Balbo at €30,000, a figure by Depero on paper at €13,000, and a 1932 canvas by Tato 'Dynamism from the African Dance' at €65,000. The central position, however, is given to Romolo Bernardi's large and dramatic symbolist composition 'Chastisement' from 1901 measuring over 2 metres. The Milanese Robertaebasta combines post-war Italian art such as Mondino, Burri and Salvo, with design from the same period including works by Sottsass.

Strong offer of 20th century works

«La coquine de plage», 1974 Dorestyl G-e-a-d, da Galerie Marc Maison

n terms of the market, Landau's entry into the fair brings the millionaire price range to complement the strong art gallery offering, which tends to focus on post-war France. The gallery offered a tribute to Marino Marini with no less than four paintings and three bronzes from the well-known Knights series, as well as sculptures and multi-million-priced paintings by Alberto Giacometti and two large canvases by Picasso including a portrait of 'Françoise' from 1948-49. Several works are well known to the market such as the large painting by Magritte bought at auction in 2017 for over £14 million, and fine more accessible works by Kandinsky and Klee. Another international presence is London-based Thomas Gibson with a focus on two artists: the art brut of Dubuffet with paintings at €1.4-3.6m, and papers between €120-525k, and Giacometti with a bronze bust of Annette at €3.45m, while papers rank between €45-350k, and a painting of Mother at €4.85m.

Galerie von Vertes also offered the big international names, with a certain emphasis on Pop Art and works by Wesselman at €380-490,000, a small 'dollar sing' by Andy Warhol at €190,000, and a classic metal sculpture by Chamberlain, a late 2008 execution, at €480,000. A few contemporary works were also on offer such as Tony Cragg's distinctive bronze with two elements at €280,000. Among the 20th century classics, a lively little work by Klee stands out at €380,000 and, as a tribute to post-war French art, a canvas by Poliakoff from 1954 at €390,000. Leading the many modern French galleries Applicat-Prazan offered the usual high level selection representative of Informal art of the French school, fromNicolas de Stael toPoliakoff, Vieira da Silvia, Maurice Esteve and Riopelle, and already in the early hours of the fairs it reported the sale of a work by Fautirer.

Painting, Engraving and Sculpture through the Centuries

Many of the exhibits at the fair are representative of centuries of European painting and drawing, especially from the French, Italian and Flemish schools. The Parisian dean of gold backgrounds Sarti offers a selection by the Bolognese Simone dei Crocefissi (Simone di Filippo), by the Florentine Bicci di Lorenzo a Saint Catherine. But the most striking work is the male figure painted by the Roman Caravaggesque Cavarozzi in his 1614 'David and Goliath'.

The Eric Coatalem gallery in Paris shows off a selection of paintings from the grand tour, including several large canvases by the Italian-born Frenchman Hubert Robert that immortalise Rome and especially the spectacular waterfalls of Tivoli. Among the paintings at the turn of the 19th and 20th century is a male portrait by Sorolla from the Ana Chiclana Gallery in Madrid, now consecrated at six- and seven-figure prices.
There is a strong presence of galleries specialising in works on paper and antique prints, with usually very affordable prices. Gallery Sarah Sauvin offered an engraving by Durer at €17,000, and a male nude study of 'David' at €65,000. Of great symbolic value is the print byCarlo Lasinio portraying Dagoty, the inventor of the colour print in 1784, with a demand of €16,000. The great classics such as Piranesi's engravings of the Colosseum cannot be missed, with prices ranging from 7-12 thousand euros. Galerie H. H. Rumbler specialises in engravings by the great masters, such as Rembrandt including a nude for €120,000, and Goya with perire works from €8,000, €38,000 for the well-known work with the 'Sleep of Reason that Generates Monsters', up to €150,000 for large engravings dedicated to bullfights. In the field of works on paper, the English specialist Stephen Ongpin offered the most probably most expensive drawing of the fair: a composition by Delacroix with a lively tiger, associated with a beautiful painting from the Louvre collection, with a demand of €1.1 million. Also striking is a paper by Degas depicting Vesuvius (€380,000), and for more affordable works two small drawings of putti by Gian Domenico Tiepolo at €7,000 each.

Beutes Desordonnees Spazio curato con opere di 5 gallerie

Sculpture and Design

The fair also offers many three-dimensional works of art across centuries and cultures. Several French galleries offer works from the 19th to the 20th century, in particular figurative and animal works, such as Nicolas Bourriaud and Univers di Bronze, while Galierie Sismann presents several stone busts in a garden setting, as well as smaller works in terracotta and bronzes. David Levy dedicates a corner of the stand to Diego Giacometti with a console on which bronze cats and drawings with the same theme rest.

In the field of non-Western arts, one of the most interesting and successful presentations with several works sold on the first day of the fair is by the Charbonnier Gallery, specialising in historical Japanese art, with a selection of finely decorated armour, helmets and shields from the Edo period.

Traditional non-European art is not to be missed in Paris, including an entire exhibition dedicated to the pre-Columbian cultures of present-day Mexico, with prices in the tens of thousands for works mainly in terracotta, up to €120-140,000 for the two most valuable and finely executed statues.

Paris is also the capital of modern design, and two galleries show the antipodes of this category: on the one hand, Galerie Vallois brings to the fairs a celebration of the great names of the 20th century, with works that are not for sale includingEileen Grey with a group of four works including the famous chair from the YSL collection that sold for millions in 2009 in the Grand Palais itself; while Galerie Marc Maison has to pierce the ceiling to show an egg-shaped polyester beach hut that seems to have landed from space in 1974, one of the most photographed objects at the fair, offered at €125,000. Perfect for those who can continue living the summer in a villa pied dans l'eau.