The world’s largest art and antiques fair, beginning this week in the Dutch city of Maastricht, puts $1 billion worth of paintings and other works up for sale in the year’s first test of demand from buyers outside the auction rooms.

Organizers of the European Fine Art Fair, known as Tefaf, are hoping to exceed the $500 million of art sold last year, even after growing concern about a recession in the U.S. This year the items include a Vincent van Gogh picture valued at more than $30 million.

Over the past twenty years TEFAF has been transformed from a comparatively modest show into one of the most important events in the international art market calendar. However last year’s visitor number could threaten the fair’s reputation for quality and exclusivity and so entrance prices have been raised, which indeed reduced the number of visitors to the fair to 70,842, a reduction of 15%. Many exhibitors commented that the lower visitor number had made the Fair more comfortable and the atmosphere more conducive to buying. TEFAF has published a new art market report, The Art Fair as an Economic Force, compiled by Jeremy Eckstein Associates. The entrance area to the fair has been completely refurbished. AXA Art has extended its principal sponsorship for a further three years.

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Posted: 03|4|08 at 2:23 pm. Filed under: News.