Stephan
Zilkens
,
Zilkens' News Blog 7 2026
I omitted Monica Bonvicini from the caption of our news blog last week. Sorry for that – but who hasn't been there? You walk around an art fair, take photos of artworks you find remarkable in all sorts of places, and afterwards you can't remember which gallery they were in or, even worse, which artist (of course: all genders) created what, where and how you saw it. Information overflow!
More than 50,000 visitors made their way to Karlsruhe this year to attend Art Karlsruhe – and somehow the fair seems to have become younger. 180 galleries took part in the German art trade's spring show, new collectors found their way to the fair and there was plenty of buying going on. But the mid-range between €100,000 and €1 million is proving rather sluggish. The most expensive painting we saw at the fair this time was a Max Liebermann beach scene at Ludorff, which was available for €1.25 million. An art fair with daylight is simply a pleasure! The next one with this advantage will be Art Düsseldorf in April.
In our Eurocentric arrogance, we completely overlooked the fact that, at the same time as Art Basel Qatar (more on this from Stefan Kobel), Zona Maco was also taking place in Mexico, to which a delegation from the BVDG had travelled in 2024. In Mexico, Johann König is flying the flag for the German art trade with a branch of his gallery under the management of Corina Krahwinkel. A friend reported on Zona as follows: ‘Zona Maco was interesting but very South American in orientation, with three-quarters of the exhibitors coming from Mexico. The fair offers a solid and innovative insight into modern Latin American art, and the guests are very picturesque and illustrious.’ More on this at Kobel's Kunstwoche.
The German Insurance Association has already revealed a few secrets about business development in 2025. The conclusion: the upward trend will continue – more so for property and casualty insurance than for life insurance. But we have politics and the press to thank for that. Property insurers in Germany generate EUR 99 billion, with a heavy emphasis on motor insurance. Fleet insurance was in deficit, and transport insurance is also only partially on a bed of roses with a loss/cost ratio of approximately 96% – some providers are likely to be in the red as a result. Overall, however, the industry seems to have almost achieved the dream result of 2020 again with a combined ratio of 91%. But let's not forget: after 90.7% in 2020, the result plummeted to 102.3% in 2021, thanks to the July floods. However, some providers are now disappearing – Helvetia-Baloise, for example, is now just Helvetia – albeit in the Baloise logo – a simple, deep blue. Hopefully, this will not affect the underwriting policy – Helvetia was more colourful.
Within the next two weeks, the jury for the first Artists in Exile e.V. award winners will meet. The studio scholarship in the heart of Cologne is set to begin in early March.
Otherwise: all quiet on the eastern front! Putin's murderous henchmen are still terrorising the country that prefers freedom to Russian slavery.
Start the new week attentively – in some places, carnival is spreading its mind-numbing influence – and next Monday is Rosenmontag.
Yours, Stephan Zilkens and the team at Zilkens Fine Art Insurance Broker GmbH in Solothurn and Cologne
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