TEFAF

Post-War and Contemporary art accounts for almost half of total spend at auction

Every year on the cusp between winter and spring, the enormous ‘TEFAF Maastricht’ arrives at the Maastricht Exhibition & Conference Centre (MECC), a rare souk of art, antiques and design from antiquity to contemporary, Boulle to Basquiat.

Old Master paintings rarely take centre stage over Modern, Impressionist or Contemporary art these days. Yet this most traditional of collecting disciplines remains the soul of TEFAF Maastricht, the umbilical cord to its genesis as the Pictura fair.

A series of three events aimed at collectors and art enthusiasts in the run up to TEFAF Maastricht (March 13-22) launches next week in London to promote the fair.

After 17 years as managing director of TEFAF Maastricht, Paul Hustinx will step down shortly after this year’s fair to be replaced by new chief executive officer Patrick van Maris.

The list of five successful applicants for the 2015 TEFAF Maastricht ‘Showcase’ has been announced and, while it includes three Parisian galleries, unusually this year’s selection does not include any British dealers.

Visitors to ‘TEFAF Maastricht’ 2015 will be greeted by a revamped entrance to the fair alongside a new ‘curated space’ of work by post-Modern and contemporary artists to tie in with the ‘TEFAF Modern section’.

New York has firmly reinforced its status as the capital of the global art market with a 25% growth in the value of US sales last year.

Bright spring sunshine greeted the opening of this year’s TEFAF Maastricht in sharp contrast to last year when freak snowfall disrupted many visitors’ travel plans to the southern Netherlands.

Following his severe cycling accident last August, Ben Janssens has regretfully resigned as chairman of the executive committee of TEFAF Maastricht.

Since the idea was first announced in March, news had gone quiet on a possible ‘TEFAF Beijing’, a collaboration between ‘TEFAF Maastricht’ and Sotheby’s Joint Venture in Beijing with GeHua.

TEFAF have announced that they are in discussions with Sotheby’s about the possibility of launching a high-end art fair in mainland China next year.

The hectic preview day of ‘TEFAF Maastricht’ on March 14 in the Southern Netherlands was, as always, a melting pot of the world’s curators, collectors and dealers.

The latest TEFAF market report values the global art market at €43 billion for the last year. The figure was 7% down the previous year, but the fall is wholly explained by a €3.5bn decline in sales in China.

Showing up at TEFAF Maastricht in the southern Netherlands with a stand cobbled together from stale, lacklustre stock is tantamount to professional suicide, the sort of nightmare that has dealers waking up in a cold sweat.

On the feast of the Epiphany, the Tsar, his family and the diplomatic corps traditionally watched the Great Blessing of the Waters on the Frozen River Neva by the Winter Palace in St Petersburg.

IT may sound a little gimmicky, but one of the most captivating TEFAF exhibits this year was an animated version of Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder’s Vase With Flowers in a Window by the contemporary artists Rob and Nick Carter on the stand of London’s Fine Art Society.

So what is the most important revelation in this year’s TEFAF report?

THE incomparable TEFAF Maastricht opened to the usual streams of visitors at the Maastricht Exhibition and Congress Centre but, unusually for the Dutch fair, an early big ticket sale came for a British picture.