Düsseldorf is a lively city, well connected with its public transport network, with its 750,000 people it is the seventh largest German city by population.
Next to it is also Köln, which shares with Düsseldorf a love for visual art but also a rivalry over the best beer: the Alt, dark and roasted, is the pride of Düsseldorf that can be tasted in many venues in the center but especially at the Füchschen Alt.
But the competition between Dusseldorf and Cologne does not stop at the primacy of beer, quite the opposite! The oldest art fair in the world of its kind was founded in Köln: Art Cologne was born in 1967 as Kölner Kunstmarkt. For our section on fairs, let’s now look at the youngest: Art Düsseldorf.
The artistic tradition of Düsseldorf
Dusseldorf has a wide network of shopping galleries, about a hundred, and a cultural tradition that ranges from electronic music with its festivals – and the pioneering music group of the genre, the Kraftwerk – to visual art. In particular, in its great Academy, founded in the eighteenth century, great artists such as Joseph Beuys and Gerhard Richter have taught.
Among the contemporary artists born here, the highly regarded Andrea Gursky stands out, so it’s no coincidence that photography is highly appreciated. To be clear, his Rhein II from 1999, auctioned by Christie’s in 2011, reached the record sum of 4,338,500 dollars.
Andreas Gursky, The Rhine II, 1999 © Courtesy Monika Sprueth Galerie, Koeln / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn and DACS, London 2025
The Art Düsseldorf fair provides an opportunity to discover other museums in the city such as the Kunst Palast, K20 and K21, the private collection Sammlung Philara. Additionally, towards the countryside, the Langen Foundation is also noteworthy.
Considering the fair, born in 2017, we have selected some artists and stands for you.
The Art Düsseldorf fair
In fact, in addition to big names of German artists like Thomas Schütte – currently on display at Palazzo Grassi, Venice -, Gerhard Richter or international ones like Miriam Cahn from Meyer Riegger, some emerging artists are getting noticed.
It is worth mentioning the transparency and the climate of trust that can be felt in the corridors of the hangar: the economic well-being of the citizens is accompanied by the display, directly on the caption of the work, of the price of the works. Curiously, we have also noticed a frequent recurrence of the subject of the horse, presented in various forms – painting, sculpture, monumental, playful, rocking horse -.
From Societé in Berlin, we immediately notice a series by Thomas Schütte and the paintings of the talented Trisha Baga (1985, Venice, FL) who lives and works in New York, whom we met in the group exhibition Tecno at the Museion in Bolzano.
Gallery Beck & Eggeling
From Beck & Eggeling, which boasts a location in the city, we notice Nikos Asianidis. The Greek artist (1980) brings a large painting for sale at 20,000 euros.
Also represented by the same gallery is the wife Lia Kazakou who skillfully captures details of raincoats, satin knots, colorful fabrics, focusing on the folds (a 150 x 70 cm painting is for sale at 9,500 euros). The human presence is never recorded, unlike the skilled Rome-based artist Krizia Galfo, more remarkable on a pictorial level.
Stefan Kürten proposes what he has defined as “Sunken Relief Paintings”, translated as “dipinti a rilievo incassati”. These are engravings in wood that he then colors. His smaller works range from 5000 to 58,000. They depict exteriors of luxury architectures with pools and inflatables and a landscape tamed by man.
https://www.beck-eggeling.de/de
Marc Henry in two galleries of Art Düsseldorf
The paintings of Marc Henry attract, represented by both the Berlin-based Anton Janizewski and the Vienna-based Galerie Kandhofer. They are both close-up portraits and representations of interiors. A figure in an elevator, as if in a state of limbo, transitioning from one floor to another, from one emotional state to another. A conference room is presented, with a large wooden table and a house of cards on top. It is part of a series on offices as machines of capitalism, places where power is exercised. Marc Henry looks to Piero della Francesca for the volume of the figures, while the “monad-like” desolation evokes Edward Hopper.
Fiebach Minninger with the work of Pauline Rintsch
Pauline Rintsch, with her rarefied compositions, strikes our eye with a solo show at Fiebach Minninger. Rintsch’s works enact the representation of everyday life. The rhythmic gestures, the disguises, the small vices are offered to our voyeuristic gaze as “cut out.” They are the result of an increasingly fragmented reality, no longer divided between the poles of the concrete/tangible and the digital/virtual. A vast sea of hybrid moments where intimacy mixes with social exposure, but the artist does not condemn, simply encapsulates close-up visions. The details, the crumbs of memory. Her pictorial fluidity adapts to the supports: canvas, wood, paper, ceramic. Her figures struggle between opacity and transparency.
Feipel & Bechameil from Galleria Fontana
The artist duo Martine Feipel & Jean Bechameil has been working in synergy since 2008. For the Fontana gallery, they bring ceramic birdhouses, a series born from the project “Cité d’urgences – Apus Apus”. Despite the bright colors and joyful appearance, these shelters are created every time a bird species is threatened with extinction. Thus, nature and the different forms of living beings become the protagonists, while the warning is linked to the observation of how modernity is endangering the environment and biodiversity. The costs range from € 2,000 – € 4,000 to € 10,000 – € 15,000 for Dreamers.
The duo shows particular sensitivity towards the theatricality of the world. It boasts a multidisciplinary approach, having knowledge in various fields – drawing, sculpture, engineering, directing and presentation, scenography -. It then wants to employ skills and know-how of industrial robotics to apply them to the creation of works of art.
The stand of Jahn und Jahn for Art Dusseldorf
Gallery of Munich and Lisbon, Jahn und Jahn, certainly offers one of the most interesting stands of the fair. Notable especially is the unique work exhibited by Gülbin Ünlü who lives and works in Munich. She chooses the mash-up, intertwining artistic genres: painting, photographic works and video, performance and music, using archives and AI. She draws from private and public archives to create hybrid works between painting and print. Ünlü is also on display at Villa Stuck (Munich), with the solo exhibition ULTRAHAPPY until May 11, 2025.
In the same stand Karin Kneffel, buoyed by a recent solo exhibition at the Roman headquarters of Gagosian. Stefan Vogel, one of the fellows of the prestigious German Academy in Rome, creates works composed of multiple sections. Are they family constellations or forms of interpersonal communication?
Haruko Maeda from Elektrohalle Rhomberg
The pictorial work of the Japanese Haruko Maeda is ironic and meticulous. The Great Bouquet is a basket so full of waste – including food, packaging, broken electronics, organic scraps – that it looks like a bouquet of flowers. The content is playful: out-of-service I-phones, blister packs, obsolete laptops, latex gloves, hair-filled brushes. Sizes and prices vary: from 17,400 to 23,700 (incl. 13% VAT).
Das vorvorletzte Abendmahl (The Last Supper) presents a table set. The perspective is from above and diagonal. Everything takes on importance: from the sleeping cat to the parquet robes; from the hammer to the pine cone, from the tentacle on the bed of rice to the catalog of David Hockney. Cost 26,900 incl. 13% VAT. Maeda is virtuous and magnetic. She can also be subtly unsettling. As in the self-portrait where white dust is glimpsed from the mouth… it is the ashes of the mother. Yet, it is only a cultural custom. The gap can be bridged with mutual listening.
Alfredo Barsuglia from GALERIE3, the game that supports the concepts
Francesco De Grandi (Palermo, 1968) from RizzutoGallery presents a painting of considerable dimensions. A crowded scene of galloping steeds and strange riders in a suspended time and a space without coordinates. It looks like a hunting scene, men and skeletons armed with rifles, excessively plastic and elongated dogs. Behind a barricade of thin bare trunks.
Alfredo Barsuglia, an artist of Italian origin, at Galerie3 offers cotton candy. We approach… a pneumatic object, a “castle in the air,” emulates the archetype of the house. As the sugar melts and becomes a vanilla-flavored cloud, the little house collapses on itself because the confectionery machine drains its energy. Is it the bubble of our desires that is volatile and sugary, or is it true that we take refuge in improbable dreams and fallacious narratives because we no longer have comfort zones or solid walls to support us?
Takako Saito for basedonart
In the city, there are notable galleries, At Van Horn it is possible to see the exhibition Dawn of Aquarius by Anys Reimann. Alternatively, Sies + Höke with the solo show of Julian Charrière A Stone Dream of You. It is interesting to note the only artist-run gallery based in Flingern, Düsseldorf: basedonart. At the fair, it presents an installation by Takako Saito. Born in Japan in 1929, Saito has lived in Düsseldorf since 1979. In New York, she was close to the protagonists of the Fluxus movement, such as George Maciunas, Shigeko Kubota, and John Cage. Her work is characterized by the exploration of the practices of play and chance. The DIY principle permeates many of her works, including the “You and Me Shop”.
https://www.art-dus.de/catalogue
She has collaborated for many years with art magazines such as Artribune, XIBT Contemporary, ArtApp, Insideart and Espoarte, preferring contemporary art in its many facets and media drifts.
