Where: The Royal Hospital, Chelsea, London SW3
When: Thursday 7 – Monday 11 October 2010
Opening Times: Thursday, Sunday & Monday 11am – 8.30pm
Friday & Saturday 11am – 8pm

Prices: £12 for one, £18 for two – this includes a fully illustrated catalogue
Tickets & enquiries: +44 (0)20 7259 9399 or info@artlondon.net
Transport: Sloane Square Underground

www.artlondon.net

I have attended Art London every year for 3 years. There is a reason I always come back for more, Some 70 art galleries from the UK and around the world are exhibiting at the 12th annual Art London, which opens in the special marquee at the Royal Hospital in London’s fashionable Chelsea from Thursday 7 until Monday 11 October 2010. The eclectic mix of art on sale offers visitors works by internationally renowned names, as well as accomplished emerging artists. The art
comes in many forms and media, including: paintings, drawings, glass works, sculpture and photography. These all sell from a few hundred pounds to six figures sums.

Art London 2010 sees a number of new international contemporary galleries exhibiting including Comodaa (Australia), Dea Orh (Czech Republic) and Villa Del Arte (Spain) as well as other galleries from France, Argentina and Belgium. Returning exhibitors include Whitford Fine Art and the John Martin Gallery. New galleries include Waterhouse & Dodd, Rountree Fine Art and Arthur Ackermann.

HISTORICAL WORKS AT ART LONDON:
This year the fair sees an increased number of exhibitors showing and selling historical works:
Stern Pissarro uniquely specialises in the work of Camille Pissarro and four generations of his artist descendants, of which there are 17. The London gallery is selling an oil painting, full of impressionist texture and colour, by Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), ‘Le Pré avec Cheval Gris, Êragny’ signed and dated C.Pissarro ’93, priced at £1.5 million. Also on the stand will be works by four of his five sons: Lucien, Georges Monzana Pissarro, Ludovic Rodo Pissarro and Paulémile Pissarro. From the third generation, there are paintings by H. Claude Pissarro and his daughter Lélia Pissarro, who is showing part of her new series ‘Beyond the
Spiral’. Lélia Pissarro will be at Art London painting on the stand. Her watercolours sell for between £500 and £1,000 with her oil paintings priced between £5,000, and £10,000.

Whitfield Fine Art returns to Art London for the third time and is bringing a number of historical works, including a signed and dated bronze figure by Sir Eduardo Paolozzi (1924-2005), 1956, (£55,000) and ‘Head of Christ’, a gouache signed and dated ‘51
by Dame Elisabeth Frink (1930-1993). Themes of Christ’s Passion were an enduring inspiration to Frink: her last work, unveiled
at Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral just a week before she died, was the bronze of `Risen Christ’. ‘The Abduction of the Sabines’, an
oil painting by Ceri Richards (1903 -1971), is another highlight on Whitfield Fine Art’s stand. Ceri Richards was fascinated by this
subject and made numerous sketches, influenced by his feelings about the devastation of World War II. This masterpiece was
subsequently acquired by Richards’ patron, Sir Colin Anderson.

John Nash (1893-1977), younger brother of Paul Nash, has become known for his early war subjects. However, leaving London for Buckinghamshire and Suffolk resulted in a change in focus. The collection of watercolours, drawings and illustrations on Rountree Fine Art’s stand demonstrates John Nash’s extensive knowledge of nature and botany. A newcomer to Art London, Rountree Fine Art has a sporting scene by Alfred Munnings and are bringing works by Cecil Aldin and Graham Sutherland. as well as an interesting watercolour ‘The Downed German Zeppelin L19 adrift and sinking in the North Sea’ (English School, Early 20th Century, artist not yet identified). L19 was on route to bomb the port of Liverpool but drifted off course to Wednesbury, an industrial town in the West Midlands. It suffered engine trouble, landing in the North Sea, where it was spotted by a British trawler.
A large collection of Sir Terry Frost’s art (1915-2003), which comes direct from the Frost family, is on show by Arthur Ackermann. Three works including ‘Moon Blue for ‘M’, which was the design for a Mozart LP cover, and ‘Khaki, Emerald Green’, an oil on canvas given by Sir Terry to his son Stephen on his 5th birthday. It hung above Stephen’s bed in their family home in Banbury. Arthur Ackerman also has work by Donald Hamilton Fraser RA (1929-2009) and two Ruskin Spear (1911-1990) oil paintings, which were discovered under the bed of a Chiswick pub landlady, having lain there unframed and wrapped in brown paper for over 30 years. The paintings were Spear’s bar tab, however, he was later barred from the pub for using profanity.

Daniele Pescali established Imago Art Gallery with his wife Elisabetta Tremolada in London in 2007, continuing his grandfather’s tradition of supporting up and coming Italian artists and collecting the finest modern Italian art. Daniele’s grandfather was one of Lucio Fontana’s first patrons and also knew Giorgio Morandi. Works by both these artists are for sale on Imago Art Gallery’s stand, together with emerging sculptor Matteo Pugliese, who had a successful exhibition at Imago earlier this year.

The Court Gallery in Somerset is bringing two extremely rare items: an early Picasso drawing, ‘Personnages et Deux Chiens’ from 1901, and a bronze by the celebrated English sculptor Frank Dobson ‘Wading Female Figure’, a study for Cornucopia, possibly a one-off cast relating to his most important carving, c 1925.
Edinburgh’s Open Eye Gallery has an early oil by Scottish artist John Bellany CBE, RA (b. 1942) ‘The Persecuted’, painted in 1968 during the time when his subject matter was the gritty reality of death and war, priced in the region of £50,000. Bellany numbers Damien Hirst amongst his collectors.

Whitford Fine Art has works by Pop artist Clive Barker, and painters William Gear and Kudditji Kngwarreye. ‘Landscape, Blue Element’ by William Gear, 1959, was painted at the time when this Scottish artist was curator of the Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne. Aboriginal artist Kudditji Knwarreye’s landscapes include ‘My Country 06’. In September 2009, Prue Gibson wrote in Australian Art Review, “Although Kngwarreye’s paintings are personal, they are also collective. They document the stories of an entire people. They are closer to narrative than traditional landscape scenes.”

CONTEMPORARY PAINTING & PHOTOGRAPHY AT ART LONDON:
The Little Black Gallery, showing at Art London for the first time, is exhibiting a number of photographic works by Terry O’Neill,

Patrick Lichfield and Bob Carlos Clarke whose piece ‘Fantasy Females Are Impossible To Satisfy’ is priced at £7,000.
The Heartbreak Gallery, which recently opened in Marylebone, London, is exhibiting a solo show of works by Anne Magill in advance of her forthcoming launch in New York where she has been included as one of the few artists to be displayed in the new British Airways Concorde lounge at JFK airport.

Prague gallery Dea Orh is showing works by a number of Czech artists including Jakub Spanhel and Stefan Toth, a dynamic young artist and rising star on the Czech art scene whose paintings are most famous for their use of strategies of reinterpretation and appropriation.

The recently opened Apricot Gallery, the UK’s first dedicated gallery for Vietnamese art, whose collectors include the HRH the Duke of York, is exhibiting at the fair for the first time showing a mixture of up and coming and established artists including Do Quang Em, a founding father of the Vietnamese Young artist association, and Le Quy Tong.

Galerie Ariel Sibony from Paris is showing works by Benoit Trimborn who develops his work in rural landscapes, articulating between tradition and contemporaneity. His paintings are built up in layers to achieve a highly realistic effect that nevertheless flirts with subtle abstraction.

Galerie Olivier Waltman, also from Paris, presents photography by Jean-Pierre Attal with his lambda prints mounted on aluminium, Spanish photographer Aleix Plademunt from Spain and Israeli Tali Amitai-Tabib, as well as paintings by Patrice Palacio and New York based Jérôme Lagarrigue. The Metropolitan Opera, in New York, commissioned a large painting by Jérôme Lagarrigue for their last production of Tosca and photographer Tali Amitai-Tabib was commissioned to do a series of photographs on the Camondo Museum in Paris, which were exhibited at the Museum of Jewish Art and History in Paris. She is having a solo show at the Tel Aviv Museum in February next year.
The Woolf Gallery is showing works by artists including Clay Sinclair, who has built his career by painting ‘backwards’ onto his unique medium of Perspex, Marcus Egli and Brighton based Fiona Morley.

NOMINATED CHARITIES:
This year’s charity partners include the British Heart Foundation who will be auctioning off works designed by top British contemporary artists including pieces by John Hoyland, Bruce McLean and Sir Peter Blake.
Organiser Ralph Ward-Jackson, director of Art London, said “Art London has always been eclectic, cosmopolitan and relaxed.”

Featured image:
Fantasy Females Are Impossible To Satisfy, 2004, by Bob Carlos Clarke
24″ x 34″ giclee print, edition of 100, £1,500 + VAT or 41″ x 70″
giclee print, edition of 9, £7,000 + VAT