Litvak Gallery of Tel Aviv, Israel, continued to outdo all other dealers with a lavish exhibition booth, this year's devoted primarily to the work of Dale Chihuly.
For the first full day of the biggest annual art fair for work in glass, Chicago lived up to its “Windy City” nickname with frigid blasts battering those brave enough to walk the long pathway along Navy Pier to get to the Sculptural Objects Functional Art Fair. Most collectors arrived by taxi, but, once inside Festival Hall, they found a warm welcome from dealers buffeted by an uncertain economy who were grateful to see their loyal supporters. The ranks of dealers of glass art at the 16th annual SOFA CHICAGO were noticably thinner, but this was disguised a bit with the inclusion of outsider art dealers as part of the Intuit show.
Among the sights to see was the carefully lit Dale Chihuly exhibition at Tel Aviv-based Litvak Gallery, which has over the past three years, rewritten the rules of displaying glass art at SOFA.
Lino Tagliapietra, Angel Tear, 2010. Blown glass. H 25, W 24 1/2, D 5 3/4 in. List price: $53,000. courtesy: schantz galleries, stockton, massachusetts.
Another stunning display was at Schantz Galleries where Lino Tagliapietra’s three-month-long project in Aventurine glass, an homage to the history of Venetian glass by one of the ground-breaking practitioners, was on view and on sale for $245,000. A new series of “Angel Tear” pieces were a striking new development in the maestro’s repetoire with absolutely confident control of color.
Below, we present a random sampling of sales from around the show during the first full day, Friday, November 5th. As some dealers remove work that’s sold, and we were not able to visit every dealer or photograph every sale, this is far from complete. We hope to provide some flavor for the type of work that is selling.
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