TEFAF New York is the most formal and prestigious antique art fair on New York’s spring calendar — a gathering of 88 of the world’s top dealers presenting everything from Greco-Roman antiquities to contemporary painting under one spectacular roof. It’s the New York edition of Europe’s big antique art fair.
The Latin story at this year’s edition is told through a single extraordinary object: a tea trolley by Lina Bo Bardi, presented by São Paulo gallery Gomide&Co.
The Object: A Rare Piece from Studio d’Arte Palma
Gomide&Co is presenting an ivory wood tea trolley by Lina Bo Bardi, crafted during the brief existence of Studio d’Arte Palma — the design studio Bo Bardi co-founded in São Paulo in 1948. @gomide.co
Studio d’Arte Palma lasted only from 1948 to 1951. In that short window Bo Bardi produced some of the most original furniture designs of the 20th century — pieces that fused Italian rationalism with Brazilian materials, craft traditions, and the vernacular spirit of a country she had adopted as her own. Surviving pieces from the studio are rare, making this tea trolley a significant find at an already exceptional fair.
Lina Bo Bardi 🇧🇷 (born Italy 🇮🇹)
Lina Bo Bardi (December 5, 1914 – March 20, 1992) was an Italian-born Brazilian Modernist architect, industrial designer, historic preservationist, journalist, and activist whose work defied conventional categorization. She designed daring, idiosyncratic structures that merged Modernism with populism.
Brazilians have a knack for modernism, and the family home is central to Brazilian life.
Bo Bardi arrived in Brazil in 1946 with her husband, art critic Pietro Maria Bardi, having participated in the Italian resistance movement. She quickly established her practice in São Paulo, where she co-founded MASP — the Museu de Arte de São Paulo — designing its revolutionary interior with a glass-and-concrete easel system that suspended paintings away from the walls.
Her masterwork, the MASP building completed in 1968, is one of the great icons of world architecture: a massive glass-fronted volume suspended above Avenida Paulista on four stark crimson concrete pillars, with a 70-meter open plaza beneath it. It remains one of the most visited and photographed buildings in Latin America. If you’ve been to São Paulo, you will remember that building.
Her furniture designs — including the iconic Bowl Chair (1951) and pieces from Studio d’Arte Palma — used local Brazilian woods, leather, and steel to create work that was simultaneously modernist and deeply rooted in Brazilian vernacular craft.
She posthumously received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2021 Venice Biennale, becoming the first woman to be honored for architecture.
Bo Bardi is one of the most important women in 20th century world architecture — and still underknown to general audiences outside design and architecture circles. Her deep engagement with the traditions and crafts of Brazil’s northeast, particularly Bahia, gave her work a social and cultural grounding that went far beyond style.
Gomide&Co — São Paulo 🇧🇷
Gomide&Co is an art gallery based in São Paulo, Brazil, with a program focused on Brazilian and international art. Founded in 2012 by senior partner Thiago Gomide, the gallery has connected the work of global artists to a Brazilian audience while contributing to the internationalization of narratives barely remembered by traditional art history.
Their presence at TEFAF — one of the world’s most rigorously vetted art fairs — signals the growing institutional recognition of Brazilian modernism as a world-class canon, not a regional footnote.
This new-found respect is happening across the Latin art world. People who collect Latin art may do so as an investment, but most actually want to live with the art.
TEFAF New York also draws representatives of Latin American institutions including the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA), reflecting the fair’s growing ties with collectors and institutions across Central and South America.
The Park Avenue Armory
TEFAF is the only art fair at the Park Avenue Armory to activate the 16 historic period rooms across the first and second floors with transformative exhibitor presentations.
The Reception Rooms on the first floor and the Company Rooms on the second floor were designed by the most prominent designers and artists of the 19th century, including Louis Comfort Tiffany, Stanford White, Herter Brothers, Pottier & Stymus, and others.
Those rooms are a striking vestige of old New York. Go upstairs and see them. You get a bird’s eye view of the main hall. There’s usually food service up there. Seeing the old grandeur, you wonder what you would hear if walls could talk. It’s just spectacular.
Get Tickets
TEFAF New York
NYC edition of Europe’s leading antique art fair
Important Brazilian modernist
Park Avenue Armory, Upper East Side
– Invitation preview, Thu, May 14
– Public show: Fri-Tue, May 15-19
$63+