Linke - Artinfo

22
datebook
TEFAF standouts, counterclockwise
from top: Domenico di Zanobi’s
15th-century panel painting painting Cassone
with Scenes of of a Battle, Battle at Moretti Fine
Art; Otto Jakob’s Corona earrings
with Burmese spinels and diamonds; a
detail of Pieter Brueghel the
Younger’s Proverbs, at De
Jonckheere; and Alberto Giacometti’s
Annette Venice, ca. 1960, at
Dickinson, of London.
MAASTRICHT
fully vetted
Following the pizzazz of the European Fine Art Fair’s silver jubilee last year—
which featured a 1975 Le Mans BMW painted by Alexander Calder—this year’s
edition of TEFAF, running March 15 through 24, looks decidedly more temperate.
Growing steadily since it launched in 1988 with just 97 galleries, the fair is up
to 288 exhibitors. Tom Postma has been retained for another redesign that will
frame each stand with LED lights. The 35,000 visitors, however, come not for fresh
surroundings but for fresh-to-market masterpieces evaluated by an international
team a week before the fair.
This year’s offerings include Jan Brueghel the Elder’s stygian oil-on-copper
Crucifixion, 1594, emerging from four centuries of private ownership by an Italian
noble family at the De Jonckheere booth. London’s Mark Weiss—who parted
with a “pretty unrepeatable” rediscovered portrait of King Henry
VIII for £2.5 million ($3.9 million) on opening day last year—is
putting his chips this year on Louis XIII’s sitting for Frans
Pourbus the Younger, , part of a mini-exhibition of the
Pourbus family. And Otto Naumann, , of New York, unveils
the Florentine painter Giovanni Bilivert’s Venus, Venus, Cupid,
and Pan, long in private hands but sold for £541,250
($850,000) at Sotheby’s London last July, indicating
a lessening of the stigma on recently auctioned works.
TEFAF’s ’s clientele has long been European and American, but
an ever more prominent prominent Asian Asian contingent was a target last year,
as the fair invited a hundred or so collectors from the region. region.
Still, the influx of Chinese interest is both a boon and a
headache, says Brussels dealer Gisèle Croës.
“I’ve devoted my whole life to Chinese art, but I’m
a bit disappointed lately,” she says, suggesting that
cultural differences regarding the oral contract are
an issue. “But of course I also have Chinese clients
who do pay,” she adds. Croës will appeal to them
with a unique Neolithic vessel from 3500 B.C., a stylistic
precursor of an archaic bronze ding on three legs.
Dealers generally do not report tailoring their offerings
to a new wave of buyers, but “we are not blind, and the
Asian clientele is certainly a growing market,” says Antwerp’s
veteran Asian art gallerist Marcel Nies, , citing interest in repatriation from
wealthy Thai and Indian buyers. Nies, who has presented at Maastricht from the
start, is bringing a 40-inch Gandharan bodhisattva on a throne—a rare work in
terra-cotta—as well as a 12th-century Chola bronze of a dancing Krishna. In the
contemporary sector, Gagosian Gallery will bridge the modern and ancient with
Jeff Koons’s take on the theme of Pluto and Proserpina, 2010—nearly 11 feet
tall, in bright yellow chrome, and sure to be arresting. But for historic significance,
it will be hard to beat Carl Fabergé’s imperial seal for Czar Nicholas II,
bearing a pellet of lead from a shot misfired—an assassination attempt?—during
a ceremonial salute at the Winter Palace in 1905. The 2½-inch-tall seal will be at
Russian specialist Wartski, of London. —NICOLAI HARTVIG
MARCH/APRIL 2013 | BlouinArtinfo.comAsiA
COUNTERCLOCKWISE FROM TOP: MORETTI FINE INE ART, LONDON; OTTO JAKOB; DE JONCKHEERE, PARIS; DICKINSON, LONDON