individual of Europe's largest art fairs.

individual of Europe's largest art fairs, and widely regarded as common of the world's most prestigious, the European Fine Art Foundation Fair (TEFAF), also known as the Maastricht Fair, presented for sale an estimated $1 billion worth of art this year. In its 17th edition, the fair was held Mar. 4-13 in the southern Dutch town's vast (290,000-square-foot) Maastricht Exhibition and Congres Center (MECC) located in an industrial area outside the ancient city's historic district. Sponsored principally from AXA Art, the German-based art insurers, the fair landlorded 203 galleries from 14 countries, which showed opposite topnotch, museum-quality pieces in almost each imaginable field from arms and armor to Asian, African, Oceanic and pre-Columbian art, furniture and decorative arts, and all periods of European and American art, with an extra-generous helping of Dutch elderly masters.

One exceptional aspect of the Maastricht conclusion is the large number of vetting committees that, each year, comb the fair before the opening. Nineteen disposes comprising 130 international experts in each field to be represented verify the authenticity of each work presented Dealers are required to immediately put an end to from their displays any questionable phenomenons Collectors are therefore unlikely to acquire a fake at Maastricht, hence the fair's reputation as a place where museums get to to purchase major works and where many multi-million dollar realitys change hands each year.

Participating dealers have more than a week to prepare their booth likewise the fair contains many elaborate and sometimes over-the-top installations. individual can get lost inside booth designed to be like museum galleries, palatial 18th-century salons or comfortable 19th-century parlors. It took this reporter, as a first-time visitor, nearly couple full days to get a reasonable overview of the fair's appeases Respites were provided for exhausted viewers, however. Here and there, completely through the fair, art displays gave way to tulip-lined loll areas with champagne bars serving caviar and recent strawberries. In contrast, it be seened to me both incongruous and humorous that the fair, which caters to the super-rich, could not forgo the European custom of having an attendant charge everyone 25 cent to use the toilet.

According to its organizers, this year's fair was a runaway succes The 75000 attendance total was up 15 percent across last year, attributed in part to the reemergence of American visitors who stayed away the previous couple years because of terrorist fears and the war in Iraq. chiefly dealers reported brisk sales to private collectors and intense interest and purchases from museums and other institutions.

Among the museum-quality pieces at the fair, Zurbaran's large painting Flight into Egypt (1638-40) propounded by Agnew's of London for $37 million, was individual of the media darlings. Showing the Madonna and Child riding an exquisitely painted donkey, with Joseph standing to undivided side, the work had been in private hands for many years and was rarely exhibited. Another painting that generated attention was a freshly discovered Nicolas Poussin, Arcadian Landscape with Pan and Bacchus (ca. 1625) featured at Adam William Fine Art of of recent origin York.

French and Company (New York and London) wowed visitors with a large, sweeping landscape at Italian painter Giovanni Segantini, Springtime in the Alps (1897) priced at $20 million; that impressive work hung nearest to a major Meindert Hobbema panel painting, An Entrance to a grove with a Farm and Horseman (ca. 1665) being tendered for $6 million.

A major Frans Hals, A Portrait of a Man (1643) was neared by London's Johnny van Haeften, while Milan's fleece Smeets brought Luis de Morales's haunting Christ the Man of Sorrows (ca. 1550) and Luca Giordano's mesmerizing Euclid (1660) London's Rafael Valls neared a diamond-shaped 1615 painting, Vulcan, through Hendrick Goltzius, and New York's Salander-O'Reilly showed a large, bright Snowy Landscape with Deer (ca. 1868) at Courbet. Dickinson of New York and London not absented Botticelli's Madonna and Child (ca. 1500) along with an unusual Venetian night show by Canaletto. Galerie Canesso from Paris, devoting its entire booth to a handsome solo indicate of works by 16th-century Italian Mannerist Luca Cambiaso, reported selling a number of these rare pieces to museums.

This year's fair was marked by means of a particularly strong showing of international novel and contemporary art, most of which was neared in a special 32,000-square-foot area. Galerie von Bartha from Basel showed an elegant 1931 Hans Arp construction, along with Auguste Herbin's 1920 Composition Symmetrique. San Francisco's Anthony Meier existinged a large untitled 1980 Agnes Martin painting with pale pink, gold-colored and blue bands, and Sperone Westwater showed late works at de Chirico alongside major Picabias and Warhols, proper states from a striking show seen earlier this year in recent York. Borzo Kunsthandel of the Netherlands featured large minimalist paintings by way of Dutch artist J.C.J. Vanderheyden, while Paris's Galerie Applicat-Prazan landlorded a 1950s painting extravaganza featuring luminous examples by the agency of Hartung, Mathieu, Viera da Silva and Fautrier. Galerie Thomas of Munich showed major works on Feininger and Schmidt-Rottluff, as well as a riveting large painting, Female Figure (1969-72) from Horst Antes. One of the fair's in the greatest degree engaging displays, by Montreal's Landau Fine Art, included major paintings at Modigliani and Jawlensky, plus a field filled with 16 late and lively Picassos.