Eye of the Collector’s Nazy Vassegh: ‘I don’t need 150 galleries to sustain this model’

London’s art-fair scene has suffered some high-profile casualties this year, but Nazy Vassegh, founder of the up-and-coming Eye of the Collector event, believes she has a recipe for reinvention. While the fallout from Brexit and reduced global travel during the pandemic prompted both Masterpiece and the summer Olympia Art & Antiques Fair to call it a day, Vassegh, a former chief executive of Masterpiece, believes there is still plenty of appetite for a more intimate event in the city.

“I started with the concept of enjoyment, discovery and rediscovery, but it was time to move away from aisles, booths and tents,” she says, revealing a flair for the soft sell. Her event — which she has never called a fair but seems comfortable that everyone else does — instead puts the art directly on the wood-panelled walls and floors of the 19th-century Two Temple Place in central London. “It is an imagined collector’s house. Art collectors don’t have an Old Masters room and a contemporary room. They mix it up. They have some serious works and they have some eclectic pieces,” she says. Among the established and emerging artists on view in this year’s Eye of the Collector, whose third edition runs May 18-20, are Barbara Hepworth (Alan Wheatley Art), Henri Cartier-Bresson (Peter Fetterman Gallery) and Antony Micallef (Dellasposa Gallery).

Vassegh works with a relatively small number of galleries who supply their art for her to hang — just 21 bringing about 160 works this year. The smaller size protects Vassegh from some of the variables that the larger fairs face, especially now that exhibitors are less committed to doing the same events every year. “Brexit is a problem for all of us involved in art. There’s more red tape, it’s complicated and costly to ship things. We have fewer international galleries this year, but we have a waiting list because we’re small. We are very nimble. I don’t need 150 galleries to sustain this model,” she says.

The size of the event makes choosing its works more manageable for Vassegh, an experienced adviser who personally picks each artist, supported by a curatorial committee. When it comes to vetting works for authenticity and origin, “We work closely with our select galleries to ensure all works are accompanied with full provenance and cataloguing from an early stage.”

Vassegh still champions the bigger fairs. “They are incredibly important in educating, especially in new markets,” she says. But she adds, “London isn’t a new market. The days when locals would go to a fair to learn a bit about art and have fun are gone.”

A determined self-starter, Tehran-born Vassegh attributes her focus and adaptability to her upbringing. “I left Iran when I was nine, the year before the [1979] revolution. My father could see that the country was changing and also thought I should have more exposure than just him and my grandmother [she lived with them]. So he took me to Los Angeles — we called it Tehrangeles — to live with my uncle and his family for a year.”

Vassegh then went to boarding school in the UK, at which point her father gave her the choice of going back to Iran or moving to London to live with her mother. “Not many 10-year old girls with Iranian fathers get to make that sort of decision. And once I did decide to stay in the UK, I was 100 per cent into it because it was my choice. That taught me a lot.”

Before setting up as an art adviser in 2010, Vassegh was at Sotheby’s for 19 years, latterly as managing director of its Impressionist and Modern art department. The idea for Eye of the Collector came to her when visiting the Venice Biennale in 2019, she says, and reflects her ambitious instincts. “I knew that collectors were suffering from fair fatigue and had been thinking about how to do something different. Then I went into a palazzo and realised, ‘I want this.’”

The gallerist Tanya Baxter says that Vassegh has hit the spot. “Some art fairs can be too overwhelming to focus, but I saw some serious collectors there last year, with the intention of buying something extraordinary. Nazy’s curation allows them to have a closer relationship with the art.” Baxter brings work by several established artists, including Bridget Riley, William Scott and Antony Gormley, to Eye of the Collector this year.

The event has faced some criticism — that it is too light, too easy on the eye for the high-minded art crowd. Vassegh’s marketing style, which makes good use of Instagram and her own glamorous appearance, adds to a sense of superficiality among some.

She counters with conviction. “I don’t need to apologise for presenting art in a beautiful setting,” she says. “It’s not fluff. There is still connoisseurship. Collectors and art lovers enjoy Eye and the most important thing is that it is a commercial success [for the galleries].”

Another measure of success, she says, is that about 60 works are being made especially for the fair this year, including by the textile artist Anya Paintsil (Ed Cross gallery), the painter Pippa Young (Arusha Gallery) and several pieces of contemporary design through Sarah Myerscough Gallery.

Gallerists appreciate her vision. Kristin Hjellegjerde joins the fair for the first time this year with work by six artists, including rising stars Sara Berman and Richard Stone. She says, “It was Nazy who won me over.” Vassegh’s event has also won praise for being an enjoyable experience. “It’s not a circus, like so many other fairs. I find it a refreshingly gentle way to see works,” says the art adviser Helen Macintyre, who recently joined the fair’s 18-person strong advisory council.

Having the fair in London is, Vassegh says, a no-brainer: “It had to be here, my whole career has been in London.” The city, she says, “is core to the concept and will continue to be part of the journey”, though she hints that Eye of the Collector could have a future elsewhere too. “I wouldn’t have dared to say so before now, but the platform could go anywhere.” Mindful of her forthcoming fair, though, she quickly stops this line of questioning and instead delivers a characteristically determined imperative: “Let’s make this edition as successful as possible first.”

eyeofthecollector.com