The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) is also known as the Maastfich Fair. Every year, prestigious galleries and antique dealers from around the world gather in Maastfich, an ancient city in the south of the Netherlands, and more than 70,000 visitors come from the Netherlands and around the world for a special “museum” that is open for only ten days a year, with an unparalleled collection of masterpieces and antiques worth more than USD one billion. Unlike ordinary museums, any piece of the collection on display here can be sold. The greatest pleasure for both collectors keen on Western art and the general public is that this is one of the very few places in the world where you can appreciate and purchase authentic works by Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Monet, Gauguin and Cézanne up close and personal.
The public exhibition will begin on March 9 and run through the 18th. As the benchmark of the international art market, this is a feast for the global art and antique collecting community. During this time, aristocrats, wealthy merchants, collectors, top art sellers and buyers, heads of major museums, curators, etc. from all over the world arrive in this small town without fail. In the case of sellers, they have to start preparing their goods half a year or even a year earlier. The giants are flying there in their private jets, making it an unprecedented event.
A very large number of visitors
Those who enter the TEFAF as exhibitors are all considered to have achieved the top level of the art business. Many major antique dealers have waited a lifetime for the opportunity to become a TEFAF exhibitor.
This shows the high standard of the event and the fine collection. For most people, it is actually a gathering of the world’s top sellers, buyers, and collectors, and a wind indicator for the world’s top collections.
This time, the exhibition of the works of Zou Pingzhao here represents Chinese art’s gradual move towards a global perspective, with more foreign capitalists inclined toward Chinese art and culture.
Zou Pingzhao, born in Nanjing in August 1953, studied calligraphy, painting, and seal carving with Ding Jifu, Xiao Xian, and Chen Dayu in the early 1970s. His works have won prizes in painting and calligraphy exhibitions at all levels nationwide and have been widely collected by friends in Britain, Japan, the United States, Germany, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan. Since the 1970s, he has published thousands of works in newspapers and magazines at home and abroad.
Some industry insiders believe that high-end art is a good way for the super-rich to invest in a global economic outlook that is uncertain.
Some experts say that while the motivation of buyers to pay high prices for these works of art is not clear, the sky-high art auctions show that the world of high-end art is not affected by global economic fluctuations.
“No matter what the economy does, art can always be sold.” So says Lamar Villere, portfolio manager at investment firm Villere & Co.
“They’re not really art collectors.” Joel Mesler, the owner of a gallery in New York said, “I would not even call them collectors, prefer to call them investors.” Of course, some believe that these wealthy people have many other investment channels, such as real estate, and that buying art may be true love or perhaps an arty-crafty.
According to the 2015 Global Market Report from The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF), many of the high-priced artworks in the market in 2014 were pocketed by Chinese buyers. According to another report from The European Fine Art Foundation, China’s share of purchases in the global art market exceeded 20%, tying for second place with Britain.
Works of Zou Pingzhao reappeared at TEFAF