Waddington Custot at Fiac 2019

Spanning the great European artists from the mid-twentieth century onward, Waddington Custot's 2019 fiac booth has at its heart key works in oil from the 1940s and 1950s by Nicolas de Staël, Max Ernst, Hans Hartung, Serge Poliakoff, Jean-Paul Riopelle and Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, the latter of whom is celebrated in a solo exhibition at Jeanne Bucher Jaeger which runs concurrently with the fair, and will come to Waddington Custot's Mayfair gallery from 30 November 2019. Book-ending this central period are two important Jean Hélion portraits dating from the years of the Second World War; a 1960-61 Manolo Millares piece in mixed media on burlap; a significant 1975 work by Pierre Soulages who is celebrated at the Louvre with a retrospective later this year; and late works by Jean Dubuffet, painted in 1984, the year before he died.

In line with the gallery's strong focus on sculpture, the Waddington Custot booth also includes a Marino Marini bronze sculpture alongside several Barry Flanagan works in bronze. These are shown together with freestanding sculptural works by modern masters Fausto Melotti, Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso, contrasted with new sculptural work by contemporary artist Alice Anderson, following the gallery's first exhibition of her work earlier this year. New large scale canvasses by French painter Fabienne Verdier are also included on the stand. For 2019, Waddington Custot will also include works on paper with Roberto Matta works in mixed media on paper; watercolour and pastel works by the late French artist Sam Szafran; and new watercolours by the great Fernando Botero.

After focussing on almost exclusively British artists with their celebration of the London art school network with Schools of London at Frieze Masters this year, Waddington Custot take the booth at fiac as an opportunity to showcase another aspect of the gallery's identity and heritage.