TEFAF Maastricht opened its doors yesterday for the first of its two-day invite-only preview, drawing museum directors from 370 institutions alongside the usual mix of blue-chip collectors, scholars, and art-world insiders.
Renowned for presenting 7,000 years of art history under one roof, the fair seamlessly blends Old Master paintings, antiques, classical antiquities, modern and contemporary art, photography, jewelry, 20th-century design, and works on paper. It’s a bit of a trek from Amsterdam, so those who make the voyage do so with intent—and the buyers were out in force. Within the first hour, a flurry of red dots signaled swift acquisitions.
The scene was as grand as ever, with TEFAF’s signature blend of museum-quality treasures, exquisite food, and floral splendor. This year, the arrangements reached new heights—literally—with a tsunami of blooms suspended from the ceiling in individual glass sheets, each appearing to hover weightlessly from near-invisible threads, creating a surreal, floating garden.
Here are some highlights from a fair where centuries converge, and where Titian and Dan Flavin can share the same spotlight.
A Lost Titian Resurfaces
Trinity Fine Art threw down the gauntlet with a masterful edit of the Old Masters. Hidden for over two centuries, The Madonna and Child with St. Mary Magdalen, a painting by Titian and Girolamo Dente dating between 1555 and 1560, last surfaced at Christie’s in 1937. X-ray analysis has since uncovered striking alterations—among them, the removal of a window and sunburst halo, the addition of a coral necklace, and, most remarkably, the immaculate transformation of a bearded male figure into Mary Magdalene.
Also in tow was Hendrick Goltzius’s riveting Jupiter and Juno (1616), a scene plucked from Homer’s Iliad, in which the voluptuous queen of the gods ensnares her husband with Venus’s magic girdle to sway the Trojan War. And then there was Mirabello Cavalori’s Allegorical Portrait of a Young Man—a painting over 450 years old, yet so delicate in its androgynous composure and stylized elegance that it feels entirely of the moment. It is, simply, compelling. It also looks like a fashion portrait. Creative directors, take note—many of you should be stealing ideas from this work.
“This is an allegory of friendship,” explained Tom Dawnay, a director, gesturing toward the work’s intricate symbolism. “We’ve got the dog—unfaithfulness—life, death, near and far, winter and summer. Friendship should last through all of these things. There’s another fascinating element: the inclusion of Achilles mourning over Patroclus. Given the context of male relationships, it might suggest that this friendship is with another man.”
From Old Masters to Minimalist Restraint
Offering a counterpoint to some of the fair’s rococo abandon is London-based private dealer Paul Coulon in the Focus section, dedicated to solo presentations. His entire booth is devoted to Dan Flavin’s minimalist light installation The Nominal Three (To William of Ockham) (1963). Made in three editions—one housed in the Guggenheim, another at the Dia Art Foundation—the third had been long thought lost before resurfacing in a private collection.
Flavin appeared to be the only Light and Space artist at the fair, an interesting contrast given the movement’s resurgent presence at stateside fairs and exhibitions. His glowing geometric tubes stood in stark contrast to the ornate surroundings. “Some people are here for Old Master portraits and are wondering why the hell this is here,” Coulon said. “Others recognize it immediately and are impressed. The idea for Maastricht is always to present museum-quality work. This is a seminal installation—one of the most influential pieces of the movement—and I thought this was the right place to showcase it.”
Japanese Minimalism with a Twist
The Kyoto-based gallery Shibunkaku curated a booth that balanced minimalist Zen aesthetics with historical works, all set against gleaming aluminum panel walls.
The centerpiece was Koji Hatakeyama, a bronze artist and metalsmith from Takaoka, a coastal hub of metalworking in Toyama prefecture for over 400 years. “No one can cast bronze as thin as he does,” said director Tokutaro Yamauchi. Last year, Shibunkaku sold out Hatakeyama’s work at TEFAF, prompting them to dedicate an entire showcase to his vessels this year. The artist created an entirely new series for the fair, and within 20 minutes of opening, many had already sold.
Other interpretations of minimalism included Shimomura Ryonsuke’s Soaring Dance (1991), an abstract clay wall piece that evoked a fossil relief extracted from a cave, and Yamaguchi Takeo’s Ko (1968), a striking oil-on-board painting where a textured field of ochre rapture envelops the space, leaving only a sliver of black in the corner. It was a quiet, magnetic standout—one I kept returning to. “He’s considered the pioneer of abstract painting in Japan,” Yamauchi explained.
The most unexpected addition to Shibunkaku’s otherwise restrained booth was Leonard-Tsuguharu Foujita’s exquisite 1924 proto-goth watercolor portrait Fillette au Renardeau. An inscrutable young girl stares defiantly at the viewer while clutching a black fox cub—an image as strange as it is captivating.
After arriving in Paris in 1913 and immersing himself in the avant-garde, Foujita became known for his luminous portraits of ethereal beauties and enigmatic cats.
Theater of Display
A hallmark of TEFAF is its exhibitors pushing the boundaries of booth design, turning their spaces into fully immersive environments. Brussels-based gallery Flore transformed an entire room into a moss-lined grotto with a mirrored ceiling, an homage to Bernard Palissy, the 16th-century French scientist and ceramicist famed for his intricately glazed rustic ware. Palissy’s ceramics, featuring lifelike fish, snakes, and lizards seemingly frozen in motion, were so revered that Catherine de’ Medici commissioned him to build a private grotto at the Tuileries Palace. Flore’s contemporary take on the concept featured vivid, lead-glazed earthenware depicting natural wonders alongside mythological scenes like Perseus and Andromeda and The Sacrifice of Isaac.
Parisian gallery Steinitz took immersion even further, constructing what was essentially a standalone gallery within the convention center. At its entrance stood a pair of monumental Carrara marble canopic vases (c. 1830), attributed to the Italian architect Antonio Niccolini and capped with pharaoh heads. Inside, parquet floors, wood paneling, and an ornate Venetian rock crystal mirror from the late 17th century completed the effect—every inch of the space exuding pan-European grandeur.
To mark 100 years of Art Deco, Galerie Marcilhac is bringing a full-fledged 1925 Parisian interior to life—think Ruhlmann armchairs, a rare Pleyel piano, and Pierre Dunand’s monumental lacquered doors, which are double-sided, each side revealing a different mural—one depicting an archer in pursuit of ibex.
But it was Lisbon’s São Roque that took booth architecture to its peak: they brought a ceiling. “It was decorated in the 18th century and belongs to a palace in northern Portugal that was partially destroyed by fire,” explained Hugo Miguel Crespo. “The ceiling survived. It was all blackened, and we restored it to its full glory.” While not officially for sale, at TEFAF, everything has a price. “There’s an asking price,” Crespo admitted, “but only if people are really interested.”
For those seeking a more manageable relic and who are soup aficionados, São Roque also offered a pair of Portuguese Boar Head Tureens (1767–71) for €85,000 ($92,500). “They were for very condensed vegetable and meat broths,” Crespo explained. A ceiling may be a stretch, but a tureen? A practical investment.
Portraits, Power, and Provenance
London’s Weiss Gallery has carved out a distinctive niche in the Old Master market. “The foundation of the gallery is court portraiture from the Tudor and Jacobean periods,” explained its director, Charles Mackay. The paintings are often accompanied by wall text brimming with historical intrigue—none more so than the portrait of Louis-Philippe-Joseph d’Orléans, later known as Philippe Égalité, by Pierre Delorme. The young subject is rendered with powdered hair, a blue silk coat, and lace cuffs, surrounded by swans and aristocratic splendor. He would go on to become the ultimate rebel, casting off his privilege to join the revolution—only to be guillotined by the very movement he championed.
But the sumptuously vivid 1625 costume portrait of Lady Anne Lawley, née Manning, by John Souch requires no elaborate backstory. Her opulent attire and accessories speak for themselves, perfectly coordinated with the argent-hued tablecloth and curtains. “Here is a woman who wishes to leave the viewer in no doubt as to her social standing,” Mackay said. This noble woman’s large imposing portrait is commanding a regal £225,000 ($290,900).
Across the fair, another historical standout was Giulio Aristide Sartorio’s La Luce (The Light) (1906), a striking preliminary study for his monumental pictorial cycle, Il poema della vita umana (The Poem of Human Life), created for the 1907 Venice Biennale. Despite being a sketch, the painting is fully realized—decorative, dramatic, and rich with allegorical grandeur. “It shows various stages of human life,” said Georg Steinmetzer of London’s Rudigier Fine Art. “The child, which is born. The young boy who becomes the virile horse rider, then it goes up until death. Sartorio was a master in studying movement.” The final paintings remain in Venice’s Ca’ Pesaro, but this preparatory work—directly from the artist’s family—offers a rare glimpse into his process.
Rudigier’s booth leaned into an equestrian theme, rounded out by ornamental bridles gifted to Emperor Leopold I’s envoy by Sultan Mustafa I and Ottoman dignitaries (1699–1700) and Pierre Legros’s terracotta depiction of a dramatic cavalry battle.
Arms, Armor, and the Unexpected
Speaking of battles, London-based antique dealer Peter Finer specializes in arms and armor from the Bronze Age to the early 19th century. “This is a riveted suit of chainmail called a haliber,” said Alex de Moller, pointing to a gleaming display. “The beautiful thing about armor is that it captures the form of someone after the person is long gone. We have their ghost right there. Someone wore that probably into battle.” Also on offer: a rare 17th-century samurai mask. “It’s meant to protect the face, but it’s also meant to strike fear into your enemies,” de Moller added. “And it’s modular—you could change the nose. Under here, for example, you can see a little hole. That was for sweat drainage in battle. They thought of everything.”
A less fearsome but equally compelling artifact resembled a 17th-century digital collage—an inadvertent artist collaboration. It began as a portrait of a young man by Isaak Luttichuys (c. 1655–60), later overpainted with a stormy seascape attributed to Ludolf Backhuysen (c. 1685–90). Rather than fully obscuring the figure, the second artist let the young man’s face emerge eerily from the waves. Eventually, the portrait was painted over entirely, and by the 1950s, it was sold as a pure seascape. Only recent cleaning revealed the original face, confirming it was no accidental palimpsest but an intentional, possibly satirical, intervention. “It’s a very strange oddity,” said William Bayliss of Dickson’s London, who can trace its provenance back 150 years.
Collapsing Time and Tradition
There was a strong Kenneth Noland presence at the fair, with his work appearing in multiple booths. Likewise, following his triumphant retrospective at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Tom Wesselmann was another dominant figure. But the Pop artist who loomed largest at TEFAF was Andy Warhol.
Blake Gopnik wrote the almost-1,000-page biography Warhol. In that expansive doorstop of a tome, he didn’t bother delving into some of the artist’s phoned-in 1980s series. Underdogs like Cats and Dogs and Reigning Queens, along with a plethora of random commissioned portraits, were on offer. If you’re in the market for a Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands quadriptych, Amsterdam’s Jaski has a full set.
Did you know Warhol did a full series of Picasso heads in 1985 called Heads (After Picasso)? It’s pretty unnecessary, but Skarstedt has a pretty cool abstracted tribal one that is as much blank space white void as it is yellow and green outlines. It’s going for €2.2 million ($2.4 million).
Skarstedt also had a turquoise portrait of Joseph Beuys ($1.2 million), strategically placed near one of the German artist’s sculptures, as well as four 1973 portraits of Marella Agnelli and two adorable, tiny paintings from Warhol’s iconic 1960s Flowers series.
Elsewhere in the booth is 87-year-old German painter Georg Baselitz’s Bent Drinker (1982), a raw, emotionally charged figurative abstraction that explores trauma and primal gestures in explosive orange has the asking price of $7.5 million.
White Cube brought a Baselitz from the beginning of the artist’s career when he was just 24. Drei Köpfe (Three Heads) (1962) sold on the first preview day for $1 million. They also sold Imi Knoebel’s aluminum wall piece Cut-up 9 (2011) for €325,000 (about $355,000).
Perhaps the spirit of TEFAF is best embodied in Danh Vo’s Untitled (2024), a mixed-media sculpture that seamlessly bridges antiquity and modernity. Combining the remnants of a 1st–2nd-century C.E. Roman marble torso of a male figure and a fragment of a Roman Apollo of Asklepius with industrial pinewood, Vo creates a striking juxtaposition.
“It’s about putting different periods together and the relationship between them—the idea of hierarchy between materials,” said Global Sales Director Mathieu Paris. “ You have a very expensive Roman 2nd-century marble, from before Christ, literally juxtaposed with a very simple plywood structure that references Minimalist art, Sol LeWitt, and Donald Judd. He’s just a fantastic sculptor.” The work bears the weight of history while engaging in his signature process of recontextualizing found objects, forming a layered narrative of cultural transmission. For €400,000 ($435,000), it could be yours.
