art darts

All sorts of treasures--Not jaded after this my eleventh annual visit to TEFAF

Just back from three days at TEFAF (The European Fine Art Fair), in Maastricht the Netherlands.  My first impressions--and opinions--can be found in Prospero, The Economist's art blog,  with the title "Silver threads among the gold."  But with 260 dealers exhibiting there is so much to see that it was only in my last few hours at the fair that I saw some of the art I most coveted. Two are sculptures from very different periods; the third is a display of chairs, yes chairs, that is a knockout.

This marble sculpture is displayed at the front of the stand of Milan dealer, Altomani &Sons. It is an engaging Roman marble of the forever young and mischievous golds of love Eros and his baby brother Anteros. The carvings date to the 1st Century A.D.
The thirty inch high sculpture as now seen is an ensemble put together in the Renaissance. It is the stance of Eros and the gentle yet attentive expression in his eyes that makes this work especially moving. According to some versions of the myth, Eros was lonely and Anteros was created as his companion. Here the artist appears to be showing Eros at the very moment he discovers this marvelous gift. Altomani is asking about euros 1.3 million. It is a honey.

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Florence is the home base of the Moretti gallery which also has brances in New York and London. They are well known as dealers in fine Italian gold ground paintings. With the arrival of Andrew Butterfield, people have come to expect outstanding sculpture, too. So it is at this year's TEFAF. The work above was front and center at their stand. No one could miss this lion who is both ferocious and lusciously modelled. The piece was made about 1715 by Giovan Battista Foggini. Although the sculpture looks like a bronze it is in fact made of terracotta.

There is strong evidence that the lion is a model for a monument to Queen Anne of England. Parliament put forward extravagent schemes to celebrate her reign, almost of none of them, including this monument, were carried out. Moretti asjed about euros 400,000 and has sold this king of beasts to a European private collector..

In both of the above cases, the price of these exceptional works seems a steal when compared with, for example, the small Picasso terracotta of a centaur for which the Galerie Krugier is asking euros 9 million. Picasso was a great sculptor than painter and it is a delightful little sculpture but 9 million? When you could buy both of these wonders and have change from 2 million.


Modernist furniture dealer, Brussels based Yves Macaux can be relied on to have outstanding objects. This year at TEFAF he has produced a particularly imaginative and illuminating selling show exclusively of chairs. Among them are elegant examples by Josef Hoffmann, Adolf Luce and Henry van de Velde. The pair that grabbed my immediate attention were chairs designed in 1902/03 by Koloman Moser, an artist new to me.
These striking pieces are sleek and a showy beauties. They are made of burr elm with Egyptian inspired decoration inlaid in veneered snakewood, black maple and mother-of-pearl.  I fancied every chair on the stand, in fact. But what makes the display so outstanding is that it brings out the special, sculptural qualities--and presence--of each chair. These are pieces of furniture to sit on, of course, but they have another life as works of art, too.