Artists Thinking Out Loud: The IFPDA Returns to the Park Avenue Armory this April
The fair will bring together 80 exhibitors and an expanded focus on drawings in a nod to the medium’s long-standing relationship with printmaking.
The “gold standard for fine art print collecting” (ARTnews, April 7, 2025), the IFPDA Print Fair is an annual pilgrimage site for print curators and collectors. This spring, the fair returns to the Park Avenue Armory from April 9 to 12 with 80 exhibitors and an expanded focus on drawings alongside prints in a nod to the medium’s long-standing relationship with printmaking.
“Drawings at the IFPDA make great sense,” said Jenny Gibbs, Executive Director of the IFPDA and IFPDA Foundation. “Museums group them together because both media represent graphic thinking and the transmutation of ideas through line and pressure.”
Art historian Susan Tallman observed, “Prints [and drawings] are where artists think out loud.” Monotypes are foundational for understanding the impossibility of drawing a line (pun intended) between the two media. Curators and collectors know that a monotype is a drawing that has been printed, usually just once, ergo a “mono” print— something which sounds like an oxymoron to the uninitiated.
Edgar Degas’s moody monotype “Dancers in Rehearsal”(c. 1874–76) (courtesy of Galerie Martinez D.) is an exceptional example. To make it, the artist drew with ink on a metal plate and ran it through a press, creating a single painterly impression of evocative, impressionistic figures that still remain recognizable as the artist’s iconic dancers. (The artist was so obsessed with this messy medium that his friend Marcellin Desboutin famously described Degas’s monomania for monoprints as “swallowing him completely!”)
Additional highlights at the fair include:
Jasper Johns’s Flag (1967), a unique early artist’s proof. (ULAE)
Paula Rego’s abortion etchings (credited with shifting public opinion ahead of its legalization in Portugal) in conjunction with a talk by curator Jennifer Farrell on the upcoming Paula Rego exhibition (2028) at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Cristea Roberts Gallery)
Hernan Bas’s new etchings from his Nightmare series. (Paulson Fontaine Press)
Kiki Smith’s larger-than-life graphite drawing, Standing and Seated Girl (2004). (Jill Newhouse Gallery)
Max Ernst’s Strange Hallucination (1948), combining pen and ink with found imagery. (Isselbacher Gallery with Tim Baum)
Dana Schutz’s new etchings in which she used unconventional tools like sandpaper and tattoo machines. (Two Palms)
Francisco Goya’s It’s No Use Crying Out, from The Disasters of War (c. 1811–12), the artist’s response to the French invasion of Spain and its aftermath. (Childs Gallery)
The fair’s robust program schedule features artists (and curators) ‘thinking out loud’ in conversations between Derrick Adams, Christophe Cherix, Susan Dackerman, Julie Mehretu, Hank Willis Thomas, Terry Winters, and others.
The IFPDA Print Fair will be held at the Park Avenue Armory from April 9 to 12.
To learn more, visit fineartprintfair.org.
