Before the Next Portrait: A Look Ahead to Frankfurt

This is an interlude in the series. The portraits of the eight artists in VERMEER on Tour: European Group Show 2026 will resume with the next installment. Christoph Eberle, Chris Klein, Lorena Kloosterboer, Agnès Lefèvre, and Gerd Lieder are still to come. The online exhibition remains open through November 15 at vermeer-magazine.com.

Between those portraits, the next public stop is already in view. From October 29 to November 1, VERMEER will present the magazine and an excerpt from the group show at the Discovery Art Fair Frankfurt, the ninth edition of the discovery fair for contemporary art, in Hall 1.2 of Messe Frankfurt (City entrance, Ludwig-Erhard-Anlage 1).

Public hours are Friday and Saturday, October 30 and 31, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sunday, November 1, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday, October 29, from 4 to 9 p.m., is First Choice, for invited guests only. More than 100 international exhibitors will fill the hall: galleries, temporary and pop-up spaces, producer galleries, and artists presenting their own work. The range runs from large-scale painting to pocket-size editions, and from drawing and printmaking to sculpture, mixed media, photography, and urban art. Day tickets are €20, including the catalog; reduced and group tickets are €15. Children under 12 enter free. Tickets are available online at discoveryartfair.com. Friends and readers of VERMEER may still request a complimentary-ticket code by writing to editorial@vermeer-magazine.com.

Frankfurt is a fitting stage. The city has about sixty museums, among them the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst and the Städel, and a living gallery and off-scene around the Städelschule. The fair’s own motto for the weekend is simple: Buy Art.

To build anticipation for the fair, four painters who will be there with other presentations: Irina Biatturi with Bakerhouse Gallery, Lena Krashevka with art 42, Susanna Storch with Showroom Astrid Bierschenk, and Kerstin Emrich-Thomas with her own booth.

Irina Biatturi, with Bakerhouse Gallery

Readers of VERMEER already know Irina Biatturi. A graduate of the Nicolae Grigorescu Academy of Fine Arts in Bucharest, she has devoted herself to painting since her youth. After stays in Mexico and New Zealand, she lives and works in Antibes. Her subject is women and sensuality. The oil paintings draw on Art Deco, Art Nouveau, and the compositions of the Italian Renaissance masters. They are quiet and elegant, and open onto the glamorous world of the 1920s on the French Riviera. Her work is held in private collections and has been shown internationally in galleries, museums, and exhibitions. At the Florence Biennale in 2023 she received both the President’s Prize and the People’s Prize. Her paintings have appeared in Nice-Matin, Vauban Magazine, TOUTMA, La Strada, Maisons et Jardins, and COTE Magazine. In Frankfurt she will be presented by Bakerhouse Gallery.

Lena Krashevka, with art 42

Lena Krashevka uses painting to explore psychological transformation, setting human emotion and a psycho-emotional state onto the canvas. The human being, with feelings and contradictions, is the focus. Pain and joy, loss and betrayal, arrive unprepared, like marks on a portrait. She works between classical and modern technique, aiming at expressive psychological images, a saturated light-and-air atmosphere, and color harmony. The paintings are a way of aligning a visual image with an emotional impression, and of locating herself in the world. In Frankfurt she will be shown by art 42.

Susanna Storch, with Showroom Astrid Bierschenk

Readers of VERMEER already know Susanna Storch. She has worked as a freelance painter in Mainz since 1998. Her field is figurative realism: a clear, detailed depiction of people, landscapes, and objects. For twenty-five years her paintings have been shown in solo and group exhibitions and at art fairs in Germany and abroad, and they are held in private and public collections. Her urban facades have already appeared in the magazine. At Discovery Art Fair Frankfurt, Showroom Astrid Bierschenk presents her current series FASSADEN. The starting point is house fronts, whose lines, shapes, planes, ornaments, and lettering give the viewer a hold in urban architecture. Fleeting reflections and distorted mirrorings in the window glass slip that hold, and open virtual rooms for what is neither seen nor painted.

Kerstin Emrich-Thomas, with her own booth

Kerstin Emrich-Thomas will be in Frankfurt as an artist with …