Holland's billion-dollar baby

single of Europe's largest art fairs, and widely regarded as single of the world's most prestigious, the European Fine Art Foundation Fair (TEFAF), also known as the Maastricht Fair, tendered 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 through AXA Art, the German-based art insurers, the fair entertainered 203 galleries from 14 countries, which showed not upon 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 incident is the large number of vetting committees that, each year, comb the fair before the opening. Nineteen clusters comprising 130 international experts in each field to be represented verify the authenticity of each work presented Dealers are required to immediately carry from their displays any questionable particulars Collectors are therefore unlikely to acquire a fake at Maastricht, hence the fair's reputation as a place where museums approach to purchase major works and where many multi-million dollar existences change hands each year.

Participating dealers have more than a week to prepare their booth in like manner the fair contains many elaborate and sometimes over-the-top installations. single 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 sum of two units full days to get a reasonable overview of the fair's satisfieds Respites were provided for exhausted viewers, however. Here and there, from one extremity to the other of the fair, art displays gave way to tulip-lined recline areas with champagne bars serving caviar and new strawberries. In contrast, it appeared 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 above last year, attributed in part to the reemergence of American visitors who stayed away the previous sum of two units years because of terrorist fears and the war in Iraq. greatest in quantity dealers reported brisk sales to private collectors and intense interest and purchases by the agency of museums and other institutions.

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

French and Company (New York and London) wowed visitors with a large, sweeping landscape by the agency of 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 timber-land with a Farm and Horseman (ca. 1665) being proffered for $6 million.

A major Frans Hals, A Portrait of a Man (1643) was not awayed by London's Johnny van Haeften, while Milan's pillage 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 not absented a diamond-shaped 1615 painting, Vulcan, by means of Hendrick Goltzius, and New York's Salander-O'Reilly showed a large, brilliant Snowy Landscape with Deer (ca. 1868) by means of Courbet. Dickinson of New York and London at handed Botticelli's Madonna and Child (ca. 1500) along with an unusual Venetian night pageant by Canaletto. Galerie Canesso from Paris, devoting its entire booth to a handsome solo present to view 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 through a particularly strong showing of international recent and contemporary art, most of which was not awayed 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 at handed a large untitled 1980 Agnes Martin painting with pale pink, gold-colored and blue bands, and Sperone Westwater showed late works through de Chirico alongside major Picabias and Warhols, uncompounded bodys from a striking show seen earlier this year in novel York. Borzo Kunsthandel of the Netherlands featured large minimalist paintings by the agency of Dutch artist J.C.J. Vanderheyden, while Paris's Galerie Applicat-Prazan entertainered a 1950s painting extravaganza featuring luminous examples through Hartung, Mathieu, Viera da Silva and Fautrier. Galerie Thomas of Munich showed major works by dint of Feininger and Schmidt-Rottluff, as well as a riveting large painting, Female Figure (1969-72) through Horst Antes. One of the fair's greatest in quantity engaging displays, by Montreal's Landau Fine Art, included major paintings by means of Modigliani and Jawlensky, plus a field filled with 16 late and lively Picassos.