About

The St. Petersburg Art Fair 1703 has been a regular event since 2022. The fair is hosted by PJSC Gazprom and endorsed by the St. Petersburg Committee for Culture. The project is aimed at popularizing contemporary art, developing the practice of collecting and uniting representatives of the art community.

The need for a large-scale contemporary art fair has been long overdue in St. Petersburg. The city not only retains the status of the cultural capital, but is also rightfully proud of its long-standing traditions of private collecting.

In 2022, the first St. Petersburg Art Fair 1703 attracted more than two dozen leading Russian contemporary art galleries. The exposition of the fair allowed to familiarize with the whole spectrum of artistic practices, current trends of contemporary art and the main directions of collecting.

The 1703 fair was enthusiastically welcomed by professionals of the creative industry and representatives of leading cultural institutions, and also received wide support from guests and residents of the city - over 10 thousand people visited the fair during four days.

The concept of the fair is to familiarize visitors with various forms of actual art - from the usual sculpture and painting to installations and digital art. The second fair 1703 united 36 galleries on the site of the Central Exhibition Hall Manezh, which is one and a half times more in comparison with the debut season. Participants from Istanbul, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Kaluga presented more than 1.5 thousand works of contemporary art, which were seen by more than 15 thousand visitors. 

An important element of the 1703 fair is the educational program, which the organizers hold together with the  masters school. It consists of two main blocks: the annual lecture program, in which leading experts reveal various aspects of the contemporary art industry, as well as lectures, discussions and mediations during the days of the fair.

The main goal of the annual lecture program is to draw attention to the topics of contemporary art and collecting, to talk about the tasks of fairs and their role in shaping the art market.

The 1703 Fair: inspired by the city