International Fine Art Show Celebrates 15 Years in the South End

The 15th Annual Boston International Fine Art Show will begin Thursday and continue through Sunday, Nov. 20 at the Cyclorama in the South End, featuring 40 galleries from major cities like Madrid, Manhattan, London and Chicago.

Admission for the Gala Preview on Thursday is $250. For the following show days, tickets will be $15 at the door with children under 12 admitted for free. Admission includes a show catalog, entrance to all special programs and re-admission throughout the duration of the show. All proceeds from the Gala Preview will benefit The Greater Boston Food Bank. Ticket sales and contributions have been donated to different Boston charities each year, said Tony Fusco, co-producer at Fusco and Four.

“I amazed with what they do. [The Greater Boston Food Bank] provides food and meals for over half a million people and are also the largest food bank in Boston; one of the largest in the country,” he said in an interview with Patch.

Fusco and Four is a Boston based marketing and public relations firm that has been hosting the International Fine Arts Show in Boston since it opened over a decade ago. Until the mid-1980s Boston never had an arts show that exclusively catered to fine arts, Fusco said.

“We started at the Cyclorama back when next door was a parking lot. [The show has] really grown up as part of the whole evolution of the South End,” he said.

The Annual Boston International Fine Art Show is the only fine art show in New England of its magnitude. Exhibit pieces are representative of several styles from landscape to social realism as well as continuous centuries beginning from the late 18th century. The show will be open for buyers and collectors of all price ranges.

Newport gallery William Vareika Fine Arts contributed some of the main pieces of the show, including two rediscovered pieces by 19th-century American artist John La Farge entitled "The Virgin" and "St. John the Evangelist at the Foot of the Cross." The pieces will be exhibited for the first time in 75 years.

Boston-based Martha Richardson Fine Arts will be exhibiting pieces from John Leslie Breck, founder of the first American artist colony in France, and Charles Wilson Pearle, who created pieces of hugely historic significance.

“[Breck] introduced Bostonians to new styles of impressionism,” said gallery owner Martha Richardson.

Richardson has worked with the exhibition’s honorary committee to put on the show each year alongside Governor Deval Patrick, Mayor of Boston Thomas M. Menino and Malcolm Rogers, director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

“[The show] is an incredible opportunity for Boston collectors to buy and see fine art from all over the country and the quality [of the show] has done nothing but go up,” she said.

For more information on the Boston International Fine Art Show, click here.