Edvard Munch’s Scream became the most expensive painting ever sold at auction when it went for $120m in 2012, but a lithograph by the Norwegian artist can be bought for less than 10% of the price at the International Fine Print Dealers Association’s (IFPDA) print fair in New York this year (4-8 November). John Szoke Gallery is selling The Sin (1902) for $100,000.
Prices at the fair start at around $1,000, offering an affordable entry point to the market for new buyers. At the top end, works can reach several million dollars, for example, Frederick Mulder is bringing Picasso’s Suite Vollard (1930-37), priced between £1m and £2m.
“The market for prints tracks the wider art market in that demand, and therefore prices, for artists who are popular or ascendant will be strong, while artists or artistic movements that may have fallen out of favour will appear undervalued,” says Michele Senecal, the executive director of the IFPDA, which is organising New York print week in conjunction with the fair (2-8 November).
The 90 galleries at the fair cover 500 years of printmaking, including a group of woodcuts by the 18th-century artist and founder of the Louvre, Dominique Vivant Denon, priced between £1,200 and £10,000 at Emmanuel von Baeyer. Contemporary artists Marcel Dzama, Ed Ruscha and Wayne Thiebaud are creating new works, while four rarely seen etchings by the Korean-born video artist Nam June Paik are selling for $7,500 at Carl Solway Gallery.
The artist Kiki Smith will be in conversation with the former Museum of Modern Art curator, Wendy Weitman, about the role of printmaking in her practice. The talk is supported by the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation.
