GALERIE KARSTEN GREVE participated in TEFAF Maastricht for the first time in 2005. Since the beginning of its involvement, the gallery’s booth presentation concentrates on works by JANNIS KOUNELLIS, LUCIO FONTANA, JOHN CHAMBERLAIN, PIERO MANZONI, and LOUISE BOURGEOIS. Karsten Greve’s relentless perseverance and commitment often granted him a prime selection of works, at times successfully persuading artists like LOUISE BOURGEOIS to submit works they would have otherwise kept. Her works are essential to the gallery program and, consequently, its representation at the annual TEFAF fair in Maastricht. There probably is no modern female artist who so consequently expresses emotions with the help of her artistic work like LOUISE BOURGEOIS. Thoughts which cannot be adequately expressed by words are transferred into a concrete form so that the outside world can share in the artist‘s inner life. On view at this year’s edition of TEFAF Maastricht are The Welcoming Hands These hands hold each other, tightly. They interwine and hold on to each other as to prevent the other one to leave. These hands reflect every-day gestures and inspire all together the infinite tenderness of welcoming, loving, sharing, giving and exchanging, and so much more. LOUISE BOURGEOIS made this second edition of The Welcoming Hands as a single work. Being the first to exhibit LOUISE BOURGEOIS in Europe after her emigration in 1938 to the USA, GALERIE KARSTEN GREVE has managed to acquire a selection of highly appraised works, primarily sculpture, from the artist herself. Our presentation at TEFAF Maastricht is made up of highlights of GALERIE KARSTEN GREVE’s illustrious program, centering around a core of truly exceptional artists, who have become an integral part of art history constituting, namely the postwaravantgarde. Over the years, PIERO MANZONI came to the heart of the gallery program. At this year’s issue of TEFAF Maastricht we will exhibit two outstanding works by the Italian artist: Achrome, executed between 1959 and 1960, and Achrome of 1962 - only months before the artist’s untimely death at the beginning of 1963. Called Achrome, these works look white but are actually colourless. In these paintings PIERO MANZONI experimented with various techniques, pigments and materials. The provenance of Achrome made of squared sewn canvas can be traced far back as the 1960s to the artist’s studio. For the past forty years this work was in the hands of five different collectors only. 

With a tenacious personal interest and avid curiosity, Karsten Greve pursued personal relationships and friendships, which allowed him to gain a particularly close understanding and profound knowledge of artistic aims and intrinsic concerns. For the past five years, GALERIE KARSTEN GREVE presents every year at least one masterpiece by CY TWOMBLY. Vested with a strong intuitive perception for outstanding positions, Karsten Greve began to build his own art collection, acquiring his first TWOMBLY when he was still a student in 1966. The work presented at the gallery’s booth is a remarkable accrual of multi-layered signs and symbols, evoking a tactility and a palpable, burning urgency of feeling. Created in 1961, the effusion of delicate marks, slashed pinks and creamy browns typifies TWOMBLY’s Untitled as a work on paper of the period where sweeping movements extend across the surface to evoke an imagined terrain strewn with the wreckage of sublime thought. TWOMBLY typically made use of a variety of media: graphite, wax crayon, and oil-based house paint form an aesthetic and tactile bond with the paper support. By the age of 23 Karsten Greve had further bought works by JOSEPH BEUYS, LUCIO FONTANA, YVES KLEIN, WILLEM DE KOONING, JOSEPH CORNELL and JANNIS KOUNELLIS. The prominent placement of these singular artists in the art world is firmly anchored in the innovative course of Karsten Greve’s gallery, which has introduced these formerly unknown positions to a general public. Since 1990, GALERIE KARSTEN GREVE represents and presents GOTTHARD GRAUBER, always in close collaboration with the artist and the artist’s Estate. At this year’s edition of TEFAF Maastricht we will exhibit GRAUBNER’s large-scale work Untitled, executed in 1999. Collectors and visitors will be dazzled by the luminous Farbraumkörper (Colour-Space-Body). Colour has always been the central subject of GRAUBNER’s work. Usually, the artist focuses just one “range of colour”, its manifold nuances interact with one another, in tension as well as in balance and harmony. In 2019, GRAUBNER was honoured with a large retrospective at Galerie Karsten Greve Paris. 

The galleryʼs booth therefore essentially reflects Karsten Greve’s unfailing dedication to bringing these artists to their established position in the international art context, situating them among the world’s most famous exponents. The presented works also resonate with a distinctive quality the gallery has promoted throughout its existence.