Zona Maco, one of Latin America’s largest and most important fairs, opened to VIPs on Wednesday, and by the afternoon, the consensus from participating galleries was clear: the crowd was high-energy, there were lots of quality collectors from both Latin America and the US, and sales were being closed, though not always for the highest-priced works on view.
Meanwhile, at New York’s PALO Gallery, which dedicated its booth to work by Atlanta-based painter Lewinale Havette, founder Paul Henkel said early on Wednesday that he had sold numerous drawings to an art collecting club from University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business at $1,500 a piece, and that he had a large painting on reserve from a US corporate collection for $24,000, but had yet to sell the other paintings, priced between $16,000 and $20,000. Still, Henkel seemed impressed by Maco, where PALO was showing for the first time.
“The energy is palpable. The aisles are full. We have had a ton of interest,” he said. “It’s a very different environment than Art Cologne, which was the last fair we did.”
