A Close Look At Galleries That Exemplify The Ethos Of Salon Art + Design

Installation view of Galerie Gmurzynska booth at Salon Art + Design

Courtesy of Galerie Gmurzynska

Four large, wall-mounted wooden sculptures unified by black paint create an intricate, grid-like, and cubicle-filled abstracted visual narrative of city life. At nearly 12-feet wide and more than eight-feet tall, the monumental artwork conveys the labyrinthine emotions of urban existence that emanate both from city streets and interior spaces designed in grids.

While Louise Nevelson’s singular monumental sculptural assemblage is firmly planted in fine art history, her works also exemplify the compositional order and harmony, use of materials, unifying colors, and attention to form that’s typical of design.

Nevelson’s City Series (1974) anchors the Galerie Gmurzynska booth at Salon Art + Design, amplifying the significance and use of the grid as a seminal and transformative tool in 20th-century art and Modernity. The grid is as essential to Abstract painting and modern architecture as it is to graphic design and the digital world of screens.

“We started Nevelson for the first principal piece because she is exactly that,” an artist who combines art and design, said Mathias Rastorfer, CEO and co-owner of Galerie Gmurzynska. “She has an incredible design presence when it comes to her installations. With Nevelson, you have this incredible sense of high art, but you also have this sense of livable work that gives you a sense of design.”

The expansive booth also features three collages by Nevelson using paper, paint, wood, and cardboard which underscore that relationship between fine art and design. Another focus of Galerie Gmurzynska’s booth is an array of paintings by Wifredo Lam, who is being showcased at When I Don’t Sleep, I Dream, on view at MoMA through April 11, 2026. As the representative of the artist’s estate, Galerie Gmurzynska is a key institutional supporter of the MoMA exhibition and has been working with the museum to promote his legacy. Cuba-born Lam advanced the Modernist tradition by introducing an urgent dialogue for Black diasporic culture, asserting that his art was an “act of decolonization.”

“We added Lam, because obviously it’s the Lam moment with the MoMA opening, and I think we wanted to have it very toned down, with the furniture being from the 1950s and onwards.” said Rastorfer.

Debuting this year at the collectible design and fine art fair produced by Sanford L. Smith + Associates, Isabel Sullivan Gallery takes over a corner booth to present a meticulously curated environment of fine art and design. Indulge in the serenity of Kawabi’s handcrafted, totem-like Souvenir Floor Lamp (2025), with American black walnut and pleated Japanese kozo paper bridging east and west. The lamp with a floating brass cylinder draws the viewer to Liu Shuishi’s elegant oil on linen She Becomes Herself (2018-2025) to its left and Shuishi’s Memory Lane (2021) to its right.

Richard Hambleton’s large-scale, dynamic, and visceral depiction of a bucking bronco within a rodeo pit, Upheaval (circa 1983), is tamed by the sleek serenity of Jøna Maaryn’s powder coated steel and concrete chairs: Embre (2024) and Paloma Negra (2024), which merge elements of Japanese brutalism and futuristic architecture as well as Ollin’s stainless steel, and canterastone Cabrakan Table (2025). The table gets its name from a figure from Mayan mythology associated with earthquakes and mountains and functions also as a bench punctuated by a unique sculptural slit.

Isabel Sullivan Gallery extends the journey across continents with Frank Webster’s watercolor and gouache on paper Monacobreen (2024) and ReinsdyrflyaI (Monacobreen) (2024), depicting the drama of a large, accessible tidewater glacier in Svalbard, Norway. It’s tempting not to take a seat on Ollin’s cowhide and canterastone Brigid Bench (2025) while gazing at the glacier.

Imagine a dream living space at the Opera Gallery booth, where Pablo Picasso’s 1968 graphite on paper L’Étreinte (The Embrace) greets visitors who encounter a wide range of fine art and design pieces. La Bataille d’Uccello (The Battle of Uccello) a large-scale abstract oil painting created by Russian artist André Lanskoy around 1968 shifts the mood with the warm colors dulling the sting of war. Lanskoy painted in lyrical abstraction or tachisme (from the French word tache meaning to stain), a French style of abstract painting popular in the 1940s and 1950s that’s often regarded as a European response to Abstract Expressionism. The paintings invite a unique dialogue, with Lanskoy in conversion with Picasso’s Guernica.

Shifting the mood to contemporary design elements, Carlos Cruz-Diez’s Physichromie Panam 112 (2013), a chromography on aluminium gridded composition featuring vivid, neon-hued linework. Meanwhile, Ron Arad’s Big Easy (2022) Crystalline resin sculptural armchair blurs the boundaries between art and industrial design.

“We always married design and art and designers and artists. Because for us, artists are designers and designer artists,” explained Director Gregory Lahmi, who manages Opera Gallery’s location in Aspen, Colorado,

The 14th edition of Salon Art + Design at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City closes today.

“We want visitors to explore and engage with design and art in new ways that spark curiosity, conversation and deeper appreciation, with each space telling a unique story that expands the visitor’s appreciation of what art with design can be,” said Salon Art + Design Executive Director Nicky Dessources. “What makes Salon so magical is its ability to create lasting impressions. We are intentionally highlighting galleries, designers and perspectives that reflect innovative old and new, diversity, thoughtful creativity and craftsmanship. We’re also rethinking how audiences can access and engage with design and art, making it more approachable, inclusive, and exciting for collectors and newcomers alike.”