Dear Friends! I will be twittering live from this years Art Cologne and post about the greatest new (and old ) artists.

The 44th fair will be the most international ever. Modern and post-war will occupy level 1. Level 2 will present contemporary galleries, as well as Open Space and New Contemporaries, ART COLOGNE’s proven platforms for the presentation of young and cutting-edge international art.

The Vernissage will take place on April 20, 2010 from 5 p.m. until 9 p.m.

Watch the interview with the Art Cologne director Daniel Hug:

www.artcologne.de

The young and extraordinary talent Niclas Winters creates work that is powerful both in texture as well as composition. While you feel rawness in his pieces the progress in his development of different skills and techniques is tremendous and continually increasing. His brand-mark might be the chimpanzee mainly throughout his drawings, which would metaphor his recent artistic status quite well: playful but very clever!

Artition:
How would you describe your work/art/style?

NW:
My art is an illustration and comment on my surrounding and state of mind. I am bringing my urban environment mixed with my personal comment on the canvas. In various ways I am reflecting my personality and using different characters to represent these factors.

Artition:
What or who inspires you?

NW:
Everyday life inspires me, the street art scene and various artists such as Shepard Fairey (Obey), Takashi Murakami, Sam Flores etc. Everything is an inspiration if you make something out of it.

Artition:
Is there a message you want to communicate with your art?

NW:
The messages I am trying to make are conflicts in my surrounding and possibly of various other people. Stating the ovious in different forms and styles.

Artition:
How do you like artition and what would you like to be added or changed?

NW:
Artition is a great medium of displaying your art and bringing it out to the people. It is also great to have the possibility to communicate with other artists and view their art works, their styles, their stories.

Artition:
Who is your favourite artist?

NW:
Most inspirational artists which influenced my art a lot are Takashi Murakami, Banksy and Shepard Fairey although various other artists impress me with their work and help me find my own way in my art.

Visit Niclas’ profile on artition

Setting the first tone for coming season Acne shows an indigo called ‘Kex Armour’ with knee protectors in a great robot – style. Definitely a big step forward! The whole collection is worth looking here.

March 11-August 30, 2010

This spring, Neue Galerie New York presents “Otto Dix,” the first solo museum exhibition of works by this major German artist ever held in North America. Organized by Olaf Peters, Professor of Modern Art History and Art Theory at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, the show will open at the Neue Galerie, then travel to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

More than almost any other German painter, Otto Dix (1891-1969) and his works have profoundly influenced the popular notion of the Weimar Republic. His paintings were among the most graphic visual representatives of  that period, exposing with unsparing and wicked wit the instability and contradictions of the time.

The exhibition includes more than 100 masterpieces by Otto Dix, and addresses four themes. The first is Dix’s traumatic experiences as a soldier in World War I. The second is portraiture, a genre at which the artist excelled. The third is sexuality, a key theme in the Dix oeuvre. The fourth is religious and allegorical painting. The show includes the work that Dix is best know for—paintings from the so-called “golden Weimar years”—but to contextualize them, it also includes Dix’s work from the early 1920s, as well as his later work, produced as veiled protest against the Third Reich.

If you are in New York between now and 7 May you should take a day and visit the MoMA to see William Kentridge’s great exhibition called: Five Themes.

The South-African born artist is famous for his compositions of poetical elements with policital themes. With a range of animated short movies, the museum also shows other drawings, sketches, collages, prints as well as performances that gives a great retrospective on Kentridge’s Œuvre of the last 30 years.

Visit MoMAs homepage

Watch more movies from Kentridge

Read what Josh says about his piece:

My first big public art piece went up in the Bryant Park subway stop at
42nd and 6th Avenue last week through MTA Arts for Transit! You can see
it at the bottom of the stairs at the northwest corner of Bryant Park
(the videos below show you where it is).

Four students at NYU Tisch School of Arts Interactive Telecommunications
Project (ITP) co-created it — Brett Murphy, Igal Nassima, Eyal Ohana,
and Molly Schwartz — with Submedia providing equipment and support
(using no MTA funds).

If you’ve seen my work, you know the medium: still images that appear
animated when you move past. This display is digital, which is new, so
the images cycle between our 1.5 second animations, each inspired by
Bryant Park — images of nature, ice skating, fashion week, the
carousel, abstractions, etc.

The display took almost two years of development. As usual, most of the
work was in the last two weeks — late nights, moving stuff in
blizzards, approvals, etc. If anyone wants stories, just ask, there are
plenty. I also make smaller pieces for individuals and am working on a
large series for a gallery show. In the meantime, check out these videos
and links of the display (keeping in mind videos don’t compare with
seeing it in person):

* Video, including a family of five peering at the display:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIfi71_ffG0
* Arts for Transit page:
http://www.mta.info/mta/aft/lightbox/lightbox.html?station=5&img=5
* A guard and subway rider looking at it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0aTJH0jL5o
* Just the kids and family from the first link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anwg1BhkAFU
* My blog: http://www.spodek.net

DUVIER DEL DAGO

*1976 Villa Clara, Cuba, lives and works in Havanna

His installations are certainly an eye catcher. He works only with cords and light, creating 3-Dimensional objects, such as planes, bikes or persons. It seems you look at a 3-D computer design but its in real size and in front of you. Turning off the lights would cause the artwork to erase completely, making it a very transparent and exciting style of work.

Price: 15 000 to 30 000 US-Dollar

Impressionist & Modern Art

Post-Sale Report, February 2010

For more information or to view Sotheby’s catalouge, please visit: www.sothebys.com/privateview

Certainly no crisis on the Art market. A sculpture by the famous Swiss art sculptor Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) has hit a new record during auction for the highest price ever of 65 million pounds (74 million Euros).

“L’Homme qui marche I” is a life size bronze figure of a moving man and faces a great recognition value for Giacometti.

According to Sotheby’s it has just beaten Picasso’s record of his work “Boy with a pipe” that has been sold 2004 for about 104 million dollar, which was just under Giacometti’s.