World’s largest art fair

Works by Mark Rothko and Jean- Michel Basquiat sold at the world’s largest art and antiques fair in the Dutch city of  Maastricht as U.S. collectors and museums spent millions, informs bloomberg.com.
Other buyers at Tefaf, the 23rd annual European Fine Art Fair, took time to adjust to price rises after record results  in auctions. The 10-day event, organized by dealers, offered $2.7 billion of museum-quality artworks, antiques, design and  jewelry from prehistory to the present day.
Dealers raised some prices after surprise auction results for classic contemporary works such as the 65 million pounds  ($103.4 million) paid for Giacometti’s 1961 bronze “Walking Man I” and the double-estimate 23.2 million pounds for the Lenz  collection of “Zero Art” at Sotheby’s London last month. In the event, few collectors were willing to pay comparable prices  at Tefaf, said dealers, though no totals were available from the record 263 galleries from 17 countries.

24.03.10