Nine new exhibitors
Like last year, the fair will welcome 39 exhibitors – with a significant proportion of foreign galleries (18 from 8 different countries) – and will host nine new galleries, half of whom are foreign. The entry of two Milanese galleries, Bottegantica and Cortona, brings the number of Italian exhibitors to five. The New York gallery Zeit Contemporary Art joins the three other American galleries present. The Swiss Bailly Gallery and the French galleries Alexis Pentcheff, Dina Vierny, Françoise Livinec and Fabienne Fiacre will join the other specialists in modern and contemporary drawings, representing a third of the dealers. The Kevorkian gallery will bring its expertise in the field of Persian miniatures.
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Drawings at France’s Musée de l’Armée
This year’s edition of the Salon du Dessin will host two dedicated museum exhibitions: one from the Musée de l'Armée located in the Invalides district. This museum possesses a still little-known collection of around 10,000 works and will be showing a selection ranging from the 16th to the 21st century. The selection will highlight the diversity of its collection and the vast thematic field that the military world can offer.
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Tribute to Ger Luijten
The other museum exhibition will be organized by the Fondation Custodia which will present a tribute to Ger Luijten, Director of the Foundation since 2010, who died suddenly on 19 December 2022. An active supporter of the Salon du Dessin, participating in Drawing Week and in the related vetting processes, Ger Luijten acquired many drawings at the Salon, a selection of which will be exhibited in a dedicated space within the fair.
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Charity gala dinner for the Institut Curie
On Thursday 23 March, the Salon du Dessin will host a gala dinner at the Palais Brongniart, the proceeds of which will be donated to the Institut Curie, France’s leading cancer research institute linked to a cutting-edge hospital complex.
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The Salon du Dessin, epicenter of events focused on drawing
The partnership with Drawing Now, initiated last year, will be reiterated, allowing visitors to one of the fairs to have reduced price access to the other and thus promote visits to both fairs.
Since 2010, the Daniel & Florence Guerlain Foundation has regularly awarded its Contemporary Drawing Prize (created in 2007) at the Salon du Dessin. This year, the 2023 Prize has focused on Outsider Art with three artists shortlisted : Pascal Leydier, born in Belgium in 1988, Mehrdad Rashidi, born in Iran in 1963 and Melvin Way, born in America in 1954. Their work will be shown at the Salon du Dessin where the name of the winner will be announced on Thursday 23 March 2023.
Garden & Botanical Art: scientific meetings, exclusive visits and children’s drawing competition
Another highlight of the 31st edition of the Salon du Dessin will be the 16th edition of the Rencontres Internationales du dessin (International Meetings of Drawing) devoted to garden and botanical art under the scientific direction of Monique Mosser. Foreign speakers who were not able to attend previous editions due to the health crisis will be in Paris for the occasion.
Alongside the Salon du Dessin – which aims to bring together the very best works of ancient, modern and contemporary art – its organizers program a week (Semaine du Dessin) of off-site drawing-related events that represent a very popular circuit of external exhibitions. Throughout the week, the Salon du Dessin offers original visits to graphic art studios in nearly 20 museums and institutions with, for this edition, a couple of exclusive visits to gardens: the English garden of the Petit Trianon in Versailles, the new garden of the Bibliothèque National de France designed by Gilles Clément and the Archives Nationales garden designed by Louis Benech. Learn more
Having initiated a competition for children’s drawings in partnership with the Salon du Dessin, every year the magazine Le Petit Léonard receives hundreds of drawings from all over mainland France and its overseas dominions and territories. This year the theme of the competition, open to all children aged between 7 and 14 years old, is “Draw a garden with extraordinary sculptures”. The drawings of 3 winners from each of the three age categories will be exhibited at the Salon du Dessin alongside drawings by great masters.
