Art Market Budapest, the Eastern European region’s leading international contemporary art fair (October 9-12, 2014) hosted nearly 100 exhibitors from close to 20 countries and attracted over 24 thousand visitors to its fourth edition. The fair and its satellite events brought international recognition for Budapest as Europe’s outstanding cultural capital. The BERLIN GUEST CITY program and the ART PHOTO BUDAPEST section were exceptionally successful elements and will largely contribute to further strengthening the position of Art Market Budapest in years to come.
Art Market Budapest, built up on an area of some 6,000 square meters, as well as the complementary large-scale open air sculpture exhibition, offered the possibility for over 500 artists to have their works presented by some 100 exhibitors. The nearly 30 exhibiting nations represented over the past years have continued to expand this year, with exhibitors arriving for the event from Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Kazakhstan, Luxembourg, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Turkey and the USA. The fair attracted 24 thousand visitors: a new record after last year’s 22,000.
An extraordinarily rich program included over 70 satellite events organized directly by Art Market Budapest, and other world-class performances presented in a newly established co-operation between the CAFe Budapest Contemporary Art Festival and Art Market Budapest. Such performances during Art Market Budapest Week included Laurie Anderson, the Balanescu Quartet, The Tiger Lillies, and many more.
Art Market Budapest was attended by a large number of prominent figures of the international professional art scene: Nancy G. Brinker, art collector, former U.S. Chief of Protocol, Founder of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, led a delegation from Florida, USA, including Director of the Boca Raton Museum of Art, Irvin Lippman; other distinguished guests included Sergey Skaterschikov, the well-known art market investor and Founder and Managing Director of Skate Capital Corp.; Anemone Vostell, Director and Werner Tammen, Chairman of the Berlin Galleries Association; Sarah Wilson, Professor at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London; Ewald Karl Schade, Director of Art Karlsruhe; Nathalie Moreau, Director of the Faculty of Economy, Université Montpellier, co-author of “Le marché de l’art contemporain”; Ádám Somlai-Fischer, the artist-educated founder of Prezi, and others.
The collectors Marinko Sudac from Zagreb (owner of one of the world’s top avant-garde collections) and Stefan Haupt (Berlin) personally introduced selections from their collections.
The newly established exhibition section, called ART PHOTO BUDAPEST, the sole international photographic art fair in Central and Eastern Europe, strives to position Budapest as one of the new European capitals of photography. In the wake of the great Hungarian-born masters of the twentieth century who significantly influenced world photography, such as Brassai, André Kertész, Robert Capa, László Moholy-Nagy, and others, with a background insured by an institutional and educational system that is rich and possibly the strongest in the region, and with a professional base of photography found within the portfolio of nearly all Hungarian leading contemporary galleries, Hungary proves to be an especially suited location for the realization of a unique international photographic program.
Thanks to the exhibitors, who arrived from ten countries to participate in ART PHOTO BUDAPEST already in its first year, an entire exhibition hall was filled with photographic content of a high standard, on view nowhere else.
A professional day dedicated to the subject hosted many important experts in the photography of the Eastern European region, among them leading representatives of the art academies in Belgrade (SR) and Zagreb (HR), the House of Photography in Bratislava (SK), the Photography Collection of the Modern Art Museum in Olomouc (CZ), the Photonic Moments festival in Ljubljana (SLO), and many others.
The most memorable component of ART PHOTO BUDAPEST was the world premiere of the Eva Körner collection and archive, providing a selection of works by the masters of Soviet non-conformism and the Moscow conceptualism exhibited by ART+TEXT Budapest.
The special theme and an extraordinary focus selected by Art Market Budapest in 2014 was the “guest-starring role” of Berlin, perhaps the most culturally exciting European capital today. In addition to a dozen exhibition stands on several hundred square meters presented at the fair, events of the guest city program included international panel discussions and art performances featuring – among others – the street-art-style “re-painting” of the Berlin Wall by a Berlin- and a Budapest-based graffiti artist.
As an accompanying event of Art Market Budapest, during the fair, a selection from the unusual collection of renowned Berlin collector, Stefan Haupt, was on view under the title “Divided and Reunified”, in which the works of 27 artists, among them such stars as Joseph Beuys, were shown.
It is an outstanding success for the city of Budapest and Art Market Budapest that – as was announced – from 2015, the fair was selected to host “Art from Berlin” a special program sponsored by the city of Berlin and organized by the Berlin Galleries Association to support the international presentation of Berlin galleries. The program has previously been hosted in Istanbul, Seoul and Miami.
Exhibitors’ prizes established by partners of Art Market Budapest 2014 were also distributed: the jury assembled by Artmagazin awarded the Most Attractive Booth prize to Trapéz Gallery (Budapest); participants in the art education program awarded the B. Braun Prize to the galleries acb (Budapest) and Tammen & Partner (Berlin); while on the basis of an open voting process, the Fidelio Prize went to the award-winning booth of the Studio of Young Photographers in the ART PHOTO BUDAPEST section.
“The founders of Art Market Budapest were truly visionary to start their ambitious art project in some of the hardest years of the global economic crisis. The interest and attention Eastern Europe’s leading contemporary fair receives today proves them right. I’m sure when we all return home, the word will be spread about Art Market Budapest, and more of us will want to come and enjoy this inspiring art experience in the coming years.” – said Nancy G. Brinker.
Art Market Budapest chose a very spectacular way to say goodbye to its audience in 2014, with an 8-meter high urban installation erected on the fair’s closing day in co-operation with Gallery Out of Home by Hervé, on one of the main public squares in downtown Budapest.
Text + Photos: Art Market Budapest