TEFAF Maastricht 2009 Confirms Art Market Remains Solid |
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| Written by rubin |
| Tuesday, 24 March 2009 13:03 |
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TEFAF is regarded as the most important art and antiques Fair in the world. It attracts private and institutional collectors in all fields from around the globe. Curators from many major institutions including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Musée du Louvre, The British Museum, The Prado and The Hermitage visited TEFAF. It is a serious Fair for serious buyers. Dealers knowing the high regard in which TEFAF is held rose to the occasion by bringing their very best things – recent discoveries, things that have not been on the market for several decades, the rare, the unusual and the important. Lewis Smith of Koopman Rare Art, London, commented on the number of new visitors he had seen on his stand, saying “…collectors find the intrinsic value of silver comforting in times of economic crisis”. His sales included an exceptionally large William III silver-gilt Tazza, c.1700 and an important George III Royal tea urn c.1806. Other silver dealers who reported good sales included Helga Matzke, Grünwald, who sold two important 18th-century Augsburg tureens by Abraham and Christian II Drentwett to a European collector as well as a rare silver Kluftbecher, 1590, from Hamburg and F. Payer Kunsthandel, Zurich whose sales included a coconut cup and cover, c. 1669 by the Master Johann Georg Burchhardt Senior to a new private client. The volume of sales in the Classical Antiquities & Egyptian Works of Art section was high with a large number being made below €50,000. Sales were not exclusively at the lower levels however. Important sculpture attracted collectors. Royal-Athena Galleries, New York sold a monumental Hellenistic marble head of Aphrodite to a Spanish private collector for more than €200,000 while London dealer Rupert Wace sold a sensuous Hellenistic marble figure, also of Aphrodite, to a US collector for a price in excess of €400,000. Cahn International, Basel sold an important Greek marble statue of a lion, which dated from c.340 BC.  Other sales in the Modern section included Concetto Spaziale (noir) 1962 by Lucio Fontana to a German collector for €2.5 million by Parisian dealers, Galerie Odermatt-Vedovi while new exhibitor Ben Brown, London sold La Recherche de l’Absolu, 1966 by the Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte. Van de Weghe Fine Art, New York sales included a realistic work "Man on a Bench", 1977 by Duane Hansen, which had an asking price of €550,000, to the Scheringa Museum of Realist Art. Serious collectors of Old Master paintings regard visiting the Paintings, Drawings & Prints section at TEFAF Maastricht as essential. Sales this year were described as solid and seen as a measure of the strength of the market. Amongst the many sales that took place at the Fair was that of a beautiful pastel drawing by Edgar Degas, one of the few to be dated, entitled Toilette matinale, 1864, which was sold by Dickinson, London. Jean-François Heim, Paris, sold Hercules and the Stymphalian birds by Gustave Moreau (1826-1898) to an American collector, while John Mitchell Fine Paintings of London was very pleased to sell The Conversion of Saint Paul by Sebastien Bourdon, one of the most complex and enigmatic French painters of the seventeenth century. Kunsthandlung Helmut H. Rumbler, Frankfurt am Main sold a complete set of La Tauromaquia, which consists of 33 separate sheets by Francisco de Goya for around €300,000. At Friday 20 March, the overall visitor figure for TEFAF was down by 8.16% but museum interest was as strong as ever with representatives from over 180 museums from twenty-nine different countries visiting the Fair with many objects being bought or reserved for future purchase. A number of American and European Museums brought groups of Patrons to the Fair. By Thursday over 130 private jets had landed at Maastricht-Aachen airport with more expected before the end of the Fair. The next TEFAF Maastricht will take place from 12-21 March 2010 in the MECC (Maastricht Exhibition and Congress Centre) in Maastricht. Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~ |
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