Bahman Mohassess, Fauno Musicante, 1973
Frieze London and Frieze Masters ran from 14 to 18 October 2026 in The Regent's Park, with almost 300 galleries from 48 countries and regions between them. Frieze Masters brought nearly 140 of those galleries, covering art from antiquity to the late twentieth century.
These are Kei London's top picks from Frieze Masters 2026, with one from Frieze London. We chose them for what they show artists and art lovers about process, material and the record a work carries with it.
The return of Bahman Mohassess's faun
The sculpture with the best story at Frieze Masters 2026 stood on the Ab-Anbar stand: Bahman Mohassess's Fauno Musicante, 1973, a bronze figure 126 cm high.
The stand belonged to Queering Modernism: Visual Languages of the 20th Century, a new strand conceived by the curator Anke Kempkes. It runs through the whole fair and follows queer experience and LGBTQIA+ representation from early modern experiment to the postmodern art of the 1980s.
As The Art Newspaper reports, the first version was commissioned in 1971 for the plaza of the City Theatre of Tehran, removed after the 1979 revolution and later photographed in pieces. Mohassess made three versions. The one at Frieze Masters comes from a private Italian collection and had not been shown in London since 1980. It is not for sale.
Ab-Anbar gave Mohassess (1931 to 2010) a full overview: the large canvas Untitled, 1966 (196 x 363 cm), a still life Untitled from the same year, and a wall of assemblages on paper made between 1969 and 2010, several built from cut magazine photography.
Leon Kossoff: paint you can read in relief
Two Kossoff paintings sat a few stands apart. At Piano Nobile, King's Cross, Summer, 1998, oil on board, 182 x 193 cm. According to the gallery, it is one of seven large King's Cross paintings Kossoff completed in 1997 and 1998, working from a makeshift studio in the disused Midland Grand Hotel. The woman in the red dress is based on the painter Anne Norman, a friend with a studio in King's Cross.
At Annely Juda Fine Art, in a presentation of twentieth century portraiture, Fidelma No. 2, 1981, oil on board, 138.5 x 92.5 cm. Seen from the side, the paint stands proud of the board in ridges thick enough to cast their own shadows. For any painter, it is a lesson in how far surface can carry a picture.
William Coldstream: a small portrait with a long history
Also at Piano Nobile, William Coldstream's Sonia Brownell, 1939, oil on canvas, only 25.4 x 20.3 cm. Coldstream was a founder of the Euston Road School, and Brownell later married George Orwell. The painting shows the measured, patient looking Coldstream went on to teach for decades.
Henry Moore: drawing first, then the maquette
Moore appeared twice. Osborne Samuel showed Women Winding Wool, 1948, in pencil, ink, watercolour, crayon and coloured chalk on paper. Its label lists the Redfern Gallery, a 1962 Sotheby's sale and Marlborough Fine Art, where it was exhibited in 1962 alongside Kokoschka and Sutherland.
Richard Green built a display of fourteen Moore bronzes, thirteen of them maquettes. The gallery's wall text explains that at the end of the 1940s Moore drew first, often on sketchbook pages, then modelled small maquettes in batches, working on several related ideas at once. Seeing them together shows a practice in motion: an idea tested at hand size before it ever reached monumental scale.
Lynn Chadwick at Osborne Samuel
Osborne Samuel paired two ends of Chadwick's career. Short Horn, 1954, is a one-off work in iron and composition. Its label records that it was shown at the 28th Venice Biennale in 1956 and bought there by the collector René Gaffé. Maquette II for Jubilee III, conceived in 1984 and cast in 1988, is a bronze pair from an edition of nine, the caped figures with geometric heads that defined his later work.
L.S. Lowry on camera
At Richard Green, L.S. Lowry's Industrial landscape with figures, 1957, oil on canvas, 30.5 x 40.6 cm. The gallery's label records that a 1957 BBC documentary directed by John Read, watched by two million viewers, filmed Lowry painting this very picture.
Stanislao Lepri and a Greek helmet
Two more picks for the curious. Stanislao Lepri's L'apprentissage, 1977, oil on canvas, 100 x 82 cm: a child pulls at a shrouded, string bound figure in a wing chair. Lepri (1905 to 1980) was an Italian diplomat who became a Surrealist painter in Paris.
At David Aaron, The 'Sambon-Warneck' Corinthian Helmet, Greek, circa 510 BC, in bronze. Its label sets out the condition openly, including the missing skull cap, and records a published 1956 Paris sale, an IADAA certificate and a check against the Interpol database.
Over at Frieze London: Albert Oehlen
At Frieze London, Gagosian gave its stand to six new large scale paintings by Albert Oehlen: dense, brightly coloured canvases where drips, collage-like shapes and loose brushwork collide. It made a sharp contrast to an afternoon at Frieze Masters.
What artists can take from Frieze Masters 2026 (Kei London's view)
Show the process. Moore's maquettes and drawings hang at Frieze Masters as works in their own right. Studies, models and working drawings tell collectors how you think.
Let the material carry the meaning. Kossoff's surfaces and Chadwick's welded iron are inseparable from what the works say. Know why you use the materials you use, and say it in your statement.
Build the record now. Every label at Frieze Masters carries provenance, exhibitions and literature. Seventy years on, Short Horn still travels with its 1956 Venice Biennale history. Your exhibition list, dated photographs and sales records are the start of that line. We wrote about this in Forty Years in One Room.
If you want an outside view of how your own practice reads to collectors, our Practice Review is a written assessment of your statement, pricing, positioning and public record, from Kei London, an art agency in London. For how collectors are buying now, see Selling Art Directly to Collectors.
Frequently asked questions
When was Frieze Masters 2026? Frieze Masters 2026 ran from 14 to 18 October 2026 in The Regent's Park, London, alongside Frieze London.
What is the difference between Frieze London and Frieze Masters? Frieze London shows contemporary art, with 172 galleries in 2026. Frieze Masters covers art from antiquity to the late twentieth century, with nearly 140 galleries in 2026.
What was Queering Modernism at Frieze Masters 2026? A new strand conceived by the curator Anke Kempkes, running through the fair and tracing queer experience and LGBTQIA+ representation in twentieth century art. Ab-Anbar's presentation of Bahman Mohassess was part of it.
Where was Bahman Mohassess's Fauno Musicante shown? On the Ab-Anbar stand at Frieze Masters 2026. The 1973 version comes from a private Italian collection and had not been shown in London since 1980.
Photographs taken at Frieze Masters and Frieze London 2026. Thank you to Fiamma for the footage. All works © the artists or their estates, courtesy of the galleries named.
Sources: Frieze, Frieze press release, The Art Newspaper, 16 October 2026, Piano Nobile, and the galleries' wall labels at the fair.