After three published issues and two years of concentrated work online, VERMEER Magazine — International Art Magazine for Contemporary Realism — is stepping from the printed page into public view. On September 15, the online exhibition VERMEER on Tour: European Group Show 2026 will finally open. It will remain online through November 15.
The exhibition presents (hyper)realist painting by eight selected contemporary artists. Its premise is simple and exacting: these are eight perspectives that do not merely record what is visible, but intensify the way the artists look. Technique is not an end in itself. What matters is light that lingers, surfaces so precise they slow the act of looking, and that quiet moment when a painting shows more of the world than a passing glance could hold.
The online presentation is the heart of the project: a dedicated, editorially shaped space gathering the selected works for two months. The fairs that follow will show excerpts on site.
Maastricht, September 19 and 20
That first public excerpt arrives almost at once. On the weekend of September 19 and 20, VERMEER will be present at the EuropArtFair Maastricht at MECC Maastricht, with the magazine and a selection from VERMEER on Tour: European Group Show 2026.
The EuropArtFair is a professional art fair for individual artists, with visual work by more than 100 artists from across Europe. This edition also includes a large booth devoted to 23 Masters of Realism. VERMEER will stand in that landscape not only as a magazine, but as an exhibition in motion. Discounted tickets are available with the code VERMEER26 at europartfair.eu. Friends and readers may request a complimentary-ticket code by writing to editorial@vermeer-magazine.com.
Selected works from the gallery will also be shown later this autumn at the Discovery Art Fair Frankfurt, October 29 to November 1.
The eight artists of the group show are:
- Chiara Albertoni, Italy
- Julie Biver, Luxembourg / Germany
- Jacques Bodin, France
- Christoph Eberle, Switzerland
- Chris Klein, Canada / United Kingdom
- Lorena Kloosterboer, Argentina / Belgium / Netherlands
- Agnès Lefèvre, France / Vietnam
- Gerd Lieder, Germany
Over the coming weeks we will introduce them one by one. We begin with Chiara Albertoni.
First among eight: Chiara Albertoni
Chiara Albertoni, born in 1979 in Padua, is a contemporary realist painter whose work is closely associated with hyperrealism. She is known for highly detailed depictions of nature: flowers, trees, leaves, snow, cobwebs, dandelion seeds, bark, and carnivorous plants. She works primarily in oil on canvas. A restrained, sometimes almost monochromatic palette often leaves light, texture, and minute surface detail as the true protagonists. Occasional passages of color isolate a red or a fuchsia against a dark ground.
The images begin in photographic observation, yet they are not straightforward transcriptions. Extreme precision and unusual framing give familiar natural forms a mysterious, almost dreamlike presence. A frost-covered spider web, a twisted tree, or an enlarged flower can appear at once monumental and fragile. At first glance the paintings can look like photographs; they are paintings. The brushstroke disappears. What remains is a plant microcosm brought unusually close.
After a diploma in Applied Arts from the Scuola d’Arte Modigliani in Padua, Albertoni graduated in Painting from the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice in 2004. She lives and works in the province of Vicenza. Her work has been shown in Italy and internationally; her canvases have traveled to Japan, Spain, Belgium, Germany, the United States, and Australia. Among her recognitions are participation in the Premio Cairo (2004), the Talent Prize (2009), where she was a finalist with The Handless Maiden, and the Premio Fabbri per l’Arte (2012). She received recognition at the Como Contemporary Contest and took part in the Art Stays Festival.
VERMEER will present four paintings by Albertoni:
- Lilium, 2010, oil on canvas, 90 × 135 cm
- Rubedo (ciclamino rosso), 2010, oil on canvas, 86 × 94 cm
- La foresta incantata 2 (drosera with drops), 2012, oil on canvas, 60 × 51.5 cm
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