The new TEFAF on Paper section at TEFAF Maastricht, the world’s most influential art and antiques fair, has proved a huge attraction to international specialists in Old Master and modern drawings, limited edition prints, photography, antiquarian books and manuscripts, watercolours and Japanese prints. When The European Fine Art Fair opens at the MECC (Maastricht Exhibition and Congress Centre) in the southern Netherlands from March 12-21, 2010, 18 of the 19 dealers exhibiting at TEFAF on Paper will be new to the Fair. Other specialists in these fields who have been exhibiting at TEFAF for many years will remain in the existing Paintings, Drawings and Prints and TEFAF Modern sections. 

When TEFAF on Paper was announced as a new initiative in July 2009, the Fair’s Executive Committee said that it would only go ahead if there was sufficient support from dealers. The response was quick and positive and the new section is now full with 19 exhibitors from eight countries most of whom will be at TEFAF for the first-time. They will be housed in the upstairs hall where TEFAF successfully launched TEFAF Design at the 2009 Fair. TEFAF Design, which was a great attraction to visitors to the Fair, will move downstairs next to the TEFAF Modern section.

TEFAF is constantly evolving to reinforce its pre-eminent position in the international art and antiques market and TEFAF on Paper will expand the range of works that the Fair offers in a wide variety of disciplines. The addition of TEFAF on Paper is the principal reason for the record number of 260 exhibitors at the Fair in 2010. However the new section will be the final expansion of the Fair because the exhibiting space is now full.

The variety and quality of works that the TEFAF on Paper dealers will bring to Maastricht will be extraordinary. Leading photography specialists in the section will include Galerie Johannes Faber from Vienna who will exhibit the Austrian Rudolf Koppitz’s stunningly sensual 1925 vintage silver print Movement Study. The photograph of three dressed and one undressed Russian female dancers shows the link between modernism, symbolism and the Viennese Jugendstil in Koppitz’s work. It will be priced at €160,000. The gallery will also exhibit an important and previously unpublished gum pigment print of the German composer Richard Strauss taken by Edward Steichen in 1904, which will be on sale for €420,000.  Michael Hoppen Gallery of London will bring Men Wrestling, New York, one of a series of photographs commissioned in about 1975 by Francis Bacon and used by the Dublin-born British artist as working documents to paint from. It is not known who took these unique photographs which came from Bacon’s studio.

Old Master drawings will form an important part of TEFAF on Paper and Arthur Ramon Antiquari from Barcelona will be exhibiting The head of Giulio Contarini after Alessandro Vittoria by the great 18th century Venetian artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (€200,000). This red and white chalk drawing on blue paper is one of a series of 15 executed by Tiepolo and believed to date from 1742-3.  Day & Faber from London will bring a superb chalk drawing by François Boucher (1703-1770). Charlotte Sparre, holding a cup of coffee was acquired from the artist by the sitter’s uncle Count Carl Gustaf Tessin and later by her brother Count Fredrik Sparre and remained with the family until recently. It will be offered for sale for a price in the region of €400,000.

E.H. Ariëns Kappers from Amsterdam will show a series of 22 lithographs by Henry de Toulouse-Lautrec and Henri-Gabriel Ibels entitled Le Café Concert. The 1893 series depicts life in Parisian dance halls and portrays, among others, Jane Avril, Yvette Guilbert, Mary Hamilton and Aristide Bruant.

One of the most fascinating modern works to be exhibited at TEFAF on Paper will be a 16 sheet notebook compiled by Pablo Picasso. Emanuel von Baeyer of London will bring this highly important document written by Picasso in 1904-1905 and used primarily in the execution of the painting Famille de Saltimbanques, which now hangs in The National Gallery of Art in Washington. Picasso listed the colour pigments he bought and used to paint the picture. The notebook was part of the artist’s estate and in the Marina Picasso Collection (price: €72,000).

A magnificent illustrated book containing 10 original lithographs by the painter Oscar Kokoschka will be brought to TEFAF on Paper by Ursus Books of New York. Die Träumenden Knaben, was published in Vienna in 1908. It is the earliest issue of this remarkable book in its original Wiener Werkstätte binding and was the first graphic work by Kokoschka. The price will be about €34,000.

Galerie Antoine Laurentin of Paris will hold a special exhibition of more than 80 important and previously unseen works on paper by Aurélie Nemours, a leading exponent of post-war geometrical abstraction. All the periods of her working life will be represented, mostly by preparatory works for paintings which were crucial in her artistic evolution. A major exhibition of her ‘research’ paintings such as this would normally only be found in museums. 

One of the highlights of the Japanese works of art on show at TEFAF on Paper will be an extremely rare original 1920 Hashiguchi Goyō print on the stand of Galerie Tanakaya from Paris. The blocks for the prints that he produced were destroyed in the great Kanto earthquake in Japan in 1923 as were many of the prints themselves. Goyō died in 1921 and today original works by him are among the mostly highly prized of all shin hanga prints. This example is in very good condition.

Art, more than an asset

TEFAF shares its view of art as more than an asset with its principal sponsor, AXA Art. Their partnership provides art collectors with unique expertise covering the full range of risk prevention, conservation, recovery and restoration, so that they can maintain their collections in the best possible condition.

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