FOG Design+Art
January 16–19, 2020
Fort Mason Festival Pavilion
2 Marina Boulevard, San Francisco, CA 94123
Booth 203
San Francisco… Demisch Danant and Luxembourg & Dayan are pleased to announce their joint presentation at the art fair FOG Design+Art 2020. This collaboration reflects the longstanding relationship between the two galleries and their founders: both are critically admired New York institutions that have shared conceptual interests, aesthetic concerns, and distinguished clientele over the years. In particular, the galleries both have an abiding commitment to the work of César (born Cesare Baldaccini, 1921–1998), the famed French sculptor of the Nouveau Réalisme movement. Working closely with the César Foundation, Luxembourg & Dayan has presented his art in two acclaimed exhibitions in 2013 and 2016, while Demisch Danant has featured the artist’s furniture and designs in important group shows in 2016 and 2018. Embracing the opportunity to exhibit together at the 2020 edition of FOG, the two galleries will showcase their complementary endeavors to champion César as well as other groundbreaking figures from the 20th and 21st centuries.
As the point of departure for their collaboration at FOG, Demisch Danant and Luxembourg & Dayan will present César’s 1966 sculpture Le Sein, a bold bronze that was reportedly cast from the breast of a cabaret dancer. Organized around this central sculpture are works of art and design by outstanding female creatives and by male artists who pay tribute to female figures: Janine Abraham, Derrick Adams, Enrico Baj, Irma Blank, Geneviève Dangles and Christian Defrance, Jos Devriendt, Maria Pergay, Richard Prince, Sheila Hicks, and Piotr Uklański. By bringing together these objects at FOG 2020, Demisch Danant and Luxembourg & Dayan highlight the contributions of women as both makers and muses, and pose questions regarding female perspective and portrayal in art and design since the mid-20th century.
About Demisch Danant
Founded by Suzanne Demisch and Stephane Danant in 2005, Demisch Danant specializes in 20th-century French design with an emphasis on the late 1950s through the 1970s. The gallery represents the work of Maria Pergay, Pierre Paulin, Jacques Dumond, Joseph-André Motte, Pierre Guariche, Michel Boyer, Antoine Philippon & Jacqueline Lecoq and René-Jean Caillette. Curated exhibitions on historical work are presented within environments that reference architecture and interiors of the era. The gallery also features exhibitions concerning the intersection of architecture, design and art, including the work of Sheila Hicks and César.
Demisch Danant is dedicated to research and scholarship on French design and has published and authored monographs including Antoine Philippon and Jacqueline Lecoq, Maria Pergay: Complete Works 1957–2010, Maria Pergay by François Halard, and Maria Pergay: Sketch Book. Current projects include a comprehensive monograph on seminal designer Joseph-André Motte and a new book about works by Sheila Hicks commissioned for architectural projects.
About Luxembourg & Dayan
Founded by Daniella Luxembourg and Amalia Dayan in 2009, and joined by Alma Luxembourg in 2011, Luxembourg & Dayan has developed a unique program focused predominantly on exhibitions of significant but under-appreciated postwar European artists. Operating on the fringe of European Pop, Arte Povera, and Nouveau Réalisme, idiosyncratic artists like César, Enrico Baj, and Domenico Gnoli were marginalized from dominant discourse for decades. In revisiting these artists, the gallery has renewed critical interest in their oeuvres. Committed to fostering historical understanding, publications with academic essays accompany most shows.
Two additional pillars of Luxembourg & Dayan’s program complement these solo exhibitions. The gallery introduces exhibitions with living artists. These are essential to the gallery’s vision, as they recast the legacy of its historical program through a contemporary lens. These artists typically create new bodies of work that stand in dialogue with historical precedents. For example, a survey of Richard Prince’s figurative oeuvre was rooted in Pop's regurgitation of mass-media imagery.
The presentation of museum-quality thematic exhibitions forms the second complementary pillar of the program. Transgenerational shows such as Contingencies: Arte Povera and After, The Ends of Collage, Unpainted Paintings, and Grisaille examined the evolution of tropes in postwar art; Figures Toward Abstraction traced the intersection of realism and abstraction in sculpture from 1910–1940. These shows locate correspondence and disjuncture between past and present artistic methodologies.