Artwork Market
Arun Kakar
Inside view of the “Flower Wall” at TEFAF Maastricht, 2025. Picture by Jitske Nap. Courtesy of TEFAF.
Elaborate floral decorations, flutes of white wine, and freshly shucked oysters made for a typical scene at The European High quality Artwork Basis (TEFAF)’s Maastricht honest, which received the primary of its two VIP preview days underway yesterday, March thirteenth.
Now in its thirty eighth version, TEFAF Maastricht 2025 sits among the many senior residents of the artwork honest world and has a formidable repute within the business. The honest’s declare to characterize “7,000 years of artwork historical past” is not only a tagline, however a severe declaration of intent that it achieves with outstanding consistency: Every part from Old Masters by to jewellery, uncommon books, sculpture, antiquities, and modern artwork could be perused throughout the MECC conference heart.
On the 2025 version of the honest—which options 273 galleries from 21 nations—discoveries, oddities, and museum-quality gadgets abound. In addition to works by well-known names comparable to Vincent van Gogh, Titian, Diego Velázquez, and Rembrandt van Rijn, a slew of works from throughout totally different slices of artwork historical past is in all places. “The depth of the honest by way of high quality and in addition subject material signifies that there’s nearly one thing for everybody,” stated Robert Bowman, proprietor of Bowman Sculpture, which has been exhibiting on the honest for 1 / 4 of a century. He added: “You get plenty of severe collectors and museum administrators who say, ‘If there’s one honest I’m going to go to, it’s TEFAF.’” Among the many standouts on the gallery’s sales space, which is presenting two centuries’ price of sculpture, is Sarah Bernhardt’s haunting plaster work Autoportrait (1870).
Set up view of Jorge Welsh’s sales space at TEFAF Maastricht, 2025. Picture by Loraine Bodewes. Courtesy of TEFAF.
Whereas TEFAF is maybe finest identified for historic works, it will be a mistake to assume that the honest isn’t wanting ahead. New managing director Dominique Savelkoul (TEFAF’s fifth managing director in 4 years), previously the top of the Belgian museum Mu.ZEE, has stated her plan to encourage next-gen collectors to the MECC. That is highlighted by the honest’s Showcase part, launched in 2008, which this 12 months options 10 galleries which have operated for 10 years or much less. Additionally of word this 12 months is the honest’s digital “Insider’s Information,” which spotlights artworks below €20,000 ($21,728).
Up to date artwork, too, maintains a powerful presence with sufficient galleries within the class to type a small honest of their very own. In addition to blue-chip names comparable to White Cube and Skarstedt, highlights embrace Marianne Boesky Gallery’s presentation of latest works by Danielle Mckinney (in dialogue with Edward Hopper) and new sculptures by Ken Mihara at A Lighthouse Called Kanata.
Set up view of D’Lan Up to date’s sales space at TEFAF Maastricht, 2025. Picture by Loraine Bodewes. Courtesy of TEFAF.
Up to date-leaning galleries are additionally taking the chance introduced by the honest to append historic parts to their present programming. On the Parisian gallery Mennour’s sales space, works by the likes of Alberto Giacometti and David Hockney are proven alongside ultra-contemporary names comparable to Alicja Kwade and Petrit Halilaj. “The thought is that this confrontation, the porosity between modernity and antiques,” stated gallery proprietor Kamel Mennour. “I like the thought of this juxtaposition. For me it was crucial to be near this concept of what persons are anticipating to see right here so I attempt to be Mennour, however in [a] totally different approach.”
Certainly, TEFAF’s biggest asset is its breadth and exceedingly excessive requirements (its entry course of and vetting committee have a fearsome repute). Latest inventory market volatility and tariff modifications created stress within the weeks previous the honest. And but gallery anxieties seemed to be allayed by the looks of a buzzing VIP day crowd. With a bounty of blue-chip gadgets on view—the honest’s most costly work is tipped to be Pablo Picasso’s Les Dormeurs (1965), with a worth “exceeding” $50 million at Landau High quality Artwork’s sales space—sellers will hope that the preliminary vitality on the bottom might be met with an identical vigor in relation to transactions.
Right here, Artsy picks out 5 excellent works from the honest, which runs by Wednesday, March Nineteenth.
Mary Cassatt, Woman with a Banjo, 1894. Courtesy of M.S Rau.
In keeping with Outdated Masters specialist Mercè Valderrey Artwork and the Athena Artwork Basis, the participation of girls artists at this 12 months’s version of TEFAF has “practically doubled” in comparison with 2024: Greater than 500 works by girls artists are exhibited by nearly 100 cubicles on the honest. Whereas that is nonetheless lower than half of the exhibitors on the honest, it does nonetheless yield some distinctive highlights. Amongst them is that this distinctive pastel-on-board work by American Impressionist Mary Cassatt, Woman with a Banjo (1894).
This tender work showcases Cassatt’s mastery of pastels, which she was inspired to make use of by her buddy Edgar Degas within the Eighties. By the Nineties, Cassatt had established herself as one of many foremost American girls artists. This work encapsulates the artist’s enduring and touching focus on the lives of women, usually in home and on a regular basis settings.
“It’s so skillfully rendered and so delicate and so delicate, however I additionally interpret it as really form of an early feminist art work which makes it notably particular,” stated Rebecca Rau, vp of acquisitions at M.S. Rau. “The dimensions and refinement and the palette are so distinctive and so particular. I really like these actually heat, deep form of burnt sienna, burnt umber hues that I don’t usually affiliate together with her.”
The work, which is priced at €4.5 million ($4.88 million), is one in every of a cluster of hefty artworks on the New Orleans gallery’s sales space. Works by Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Claude Monet are amongst these on view right here.
Richard Saltoun
Sales space 704
Juliana Seraphim, The Eye, ca Seventies. © The property of the artist. Courtesy of Richard Saltoun Gallery London, Rome, and New York.
Richard Saltoun is exhibiting a solo sales space of late Palestinian artist Juliana Seraphim, one of many main Twentieth-century Center Jap modernists. The gallery’s tightly organized survey of labor from throughout Seraphim’s profession sits within the Focus part of the honest, devoted to curated displays of single artists or ideas.
After being displaced in 1948, Seraphim moved to Beirut as an adolescent. She attended lessons with the esteemed Lebanese painter Jean Khalifé, who would arrange Seraphim’s first exhibition. The artist emerged within the Nineteen Sixties and primarily depicted girls in a mode that’s usually in comparison with Surrealism, combining dreamlike settings with a distinctively feminine sensuality.
“Her work is characterised by these girls set amongst these kind of fantastical, imaginary, architectural worlds,” stated Richard Saltoun director Niamh Coglan. In The Eye (1970)—one of many few works out there for buy by the artist from the Seventies—a large eye casts safety on a girl amid an ambiguously austere cityscape.
The work, which is priced at €80,000 ($86,858), encapsulates the female contact and freewheeling creativeness that got here to outline a lot of the artist’s oeuvre. “The photographs in my work come from deep inside me; they’re surreal and unexplainable,” the artist stated in an interview for The Girl Artist in Lebanon, a 1987 guide by Helen Khal. “I wish to painting a girl’s world and the way vital love is to a girl. Few males perceive the standard of affection a girl seeks. I attempt to present them.”
Camille Pissarro, La servante assise dans le jardin d’Éragny, 1884
Alon Zakaim Fine Art
Sales space 458
Camille Pissarro, La servante assise dans le jardin d_Éragny, 1884. Courtesy of Alon Zakaim High quality Artwork.
Considered one of an abundance of Impressionist works on view on the honest, Camille Pissarro’s La servante assise dans le jardin d’Éragny (1884) was executed at a turning level within the artist’s profession. The landscapes that he earned renown for in prior many years had now developed into extra close-up figurative depictions of moments and locations.
Right here, a servant watches lovingly over two kids in a backyard. The maid’s head is turned away from the viewer as the kids play, casting a protecting gaze. Her watchful demeanor is mirrored by one other lady within the background, who’s gardening. Painted shortly after Pissarro moved to Éragny (the place he would spend the remainder of his life), the portray is a first-rate instance of the artist’s signature thrives: wealthy foliage, dappled ochres and greens, and a simplicity in its setting that brings an emphatic realism to this Impressionist work.
The portray is priced at €1.3 million ($1.4 million) and is a part of London gallery Alon Zakaim Fine Art’s sturdy sales space of primarily Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century artwork. It additionally contains works by the likes of Picasso, Paul Signac, Marc Chagall, and Hans Hoffmann.
Bruce Onobrakpeya, Emiovwo Beroma I; Ore Mu Vbo Gbo; Agogo and Tisha, 1983. Courtesy of TAFETA.
Some of the distinguished figures of Nigerian modernism and a founding member of the influential Zaria Artwork Society, Bruce Onobrakpeya is represented in TAFETA’s sales space with a shocking patinated four-panel steel work, Emiovwo Beroma I; Ore Mu Vbo Gbo; Agogo and Tisha (1983).
The imagery on the panels references the aid plaques and commemorative heads of the Benin bronzes. These bronze sculptures, which date again so far as the 14th century, as soon as adorned the Royal Palace of Benin, in what’s now in Nigeria’s Edo State, however most had been taken by British forces in 1897. In his work, Onobrakpeya harkens again to a pre-colonial illustration of mythologies and symbolic custom—themes that the artist attracts upon throughout his apply and are sometimes amalgamated along with his private experiences.
“The subject material was at all times deeply African and really relatable to their tradition,” stated TAFETA director Ayo Adeyinka. The London gallery’s spectacular sales space contains works by numerous Twentieth-century African artists featured within the 2024 Venice Biennale main show “Foreigners Everywhere”: Onobrakpeya, Uche Okeke, Ben Enwonwu, Malangatana Ngwenya, and Susanne Wenger are among the many artists exhibited.
TEFAF wouldn’t be TEFAF with out a discovery from historic artwork historical past. This two-handled terracotta vase relationship again to 480–470 BCE is a shocking instance, in spectacular situation.
One aspect depicts an aged couple adopted by a lady, adopted by a number of mythological figures together with Theano, a priestess of Athena in Troy in the course of the Trojan Conflict, who’s proven stooped in ache. On the opposite aspect is the traditional Greek god of the ocean, Poseidon, robed in a chiton tunic and himation wrap, holding a trident in a single hand and a fish within the different. Different figures on the vase embrace Theano’s husband Antenor; a girl holding a ribbon; and a bearded man clasping his head in what seems to be a state of anguish.
“This vase isn’t solely fairly distinctive within the surroundings, but additionally in its motion,” stated Galerie Cahn director Jean-David Cahn. “It’s in good condition, although the floor has suffered.” The terracotta, which is priced at $357,000, was reassembled from fragments with restorations and fillings. It is usually a uncommon extant instance of the mythological determine of Theano, who featured in historic Greek literature, being represented clearly in a visible art work.
It’s additionally one in every of numerous fascinating artifacts introduced within the sales space of the Basel-based gallery. Historic Egyptian molds, neolithic blade axes, and Roman sculpted heads are among the many delights on view right here.
Arun Kakar
Arun Kakar is Artsy’s Artwork Market Editor.
