Latest news with #TEFAFMaastricht
New York Times
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Long-Lost Klimt Portrays African Prince
A rediscovered painting of an African prince by Gustav Klimt that captured visitors' attention at the TEFAF Maastricht fair in the Netherlands is under negotiation for sale, the Vienna-based gallery offering the work said as the event closed on Thursday evening. The early, almost photorealistic head-and-shoulders portrait of Prince William Nii Nortey Dowuona, shown against a floral background, had been on display at the booth of Wienerroither and Kohlbacher, priced at 15 million euros, or about $16.4 million. 'We are in active negotiations with a major museum,' said Lui Wienerroither, the gallery's co-founder, though he declined to name the institution. Unlike at contemporary art fairs, high-value sales at TEFAF Maastricht, which specializes in older art, are often finalized after the event to allow buyers time to investigate questions of provenance or attribution. 'Processes of due diligence have to be followed,' Wienerroither said. The man depicted in this 26 inch-high painting was a member of a group of Africans from the Gold Coast (a former British colony now known as Ghana) who were live exhibits in colonial 'human zoos' that toured Europe at the end of the 19th century. In the summer of 1896, they were put on display in a mock-African village in Vienna's Zoological Garden, where Klimt might have seen them. The highly popular show, which attracted 5,000-6,000 visitors a day, was vividly evoked by the contemporary Austrian writer Peter Altenberg in his novel, 'Ashantee.' Wienerroither and Kohlbacher says Klimt's painting came to light in 2023 when an Austrian couple brought the unsigned work, crudely framed and in a grimy condition at the time, into the gallery. The dealers say they discovered a barely legible Gustav Klimt estate stamp on the back of the canvas and confirmed with Alfred Weidinger, the author of a definitive catalog of Klimt's works, that Klimt was known to have painted a portrait of a prince of the Osu people in what is now Ghana, though the painting's whereabouts had been unknown for many years. Subsequent research revealed that the painting was still in Klimt's possession when he died in 1918 and was sold by auction from his estate in 1923. Five years later, it was listed among the works in a Klimt memorial exhibition in Vienna, on loan from a local collector, Ernestine Klein. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
CNN
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
A long-lost Klimt painting of an African prince goes on show
An early painting by the famed Austrian painter Gustav Klimt, thought lost since the 1930s, is on view for the first time since its recent rediscovery. The portrait of Prince William Nii Nortey Dowuona — a representative of the Ga people in West Africa, in what is Ghana today — was painted in 1897 and depicts the prince in profile against loose brushstrokes of florals. Just over 2 feet tall, the small portrait is on display by the Viennese gallery Wienerroither & Kohlbacher (W&K) at the art fair TEFAF Maastricht in the Netherlands, with a price tag of €15 million (about $16.3 million). The framed painting was 'heavily soiled' with a 'barely visible' estate stamp by Klimt when two collectors contacted W&K gallery with the artwork in 2023, according to a press release by the gallery. The gallery confirmed its authenticity with art historian Alfred Weidinger, who had been searching for the work for two decades. According to the press release, the portrait was auctioned from Klimt's estate in 1923 and loaned to an exhibition in 1928 by Ernestine Klein, who had converted the artist's studio into a villa with her husband, Felix. The Jewish couple fled Vienna in 1938 to Monaco, just before World War II, but the painting's whereabouts until 2023 remained a mystery. Following extensive restoration efforts and a restitution settlement with Klein's heirs, the artwork is now making its reappearance in public. W&K says the artist painted the work during the Vienna Völkerschau of 1897; Völkerschau exhibitions were colonialist-era ethnographic displays of people popularized in 19th- and 20th-century Europe. Weidinger's research into the exhibition found that a number of people from Osu, where the prince was from, traveled to Vienna to be exhibited, and that Klimt's portrait was likely a commission but ultimately remained with the artist, Artnet reported. The 1897 portrait represents Klimt's stylistic shift 'towards decorative elements,' Weidinger said in the press release, which are the hallmarks of his later style. The Austrian painter is most recognized for the gilded couple he painted about 11 years later in 'The Kiss,' which attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors a year to Vienna's Belvedere Museum. But his 'last masterpiece' — a portrait of an unidentified woman with a fan — broke records in 2023 when it sold for £85.3 million ($108.4 million) in London from the collection of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen. It not only surpassed the artist's personal auction record, but became the most expensive artwork ever sold at a European auction. Last year, another long-lost and recovered Klimt painting, 'Portrait of Fräulein Lieser,' thought to be one of his final works, sold for €30 million ($32 million).
CNN
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
A long-lost Klimt painting of an African prince goes on show
An early painting by the famed Austrian painter Gustav Klimt, thought lost since the 1930s, is on view for the first time since its recent rediscovery. The portrait of Prince William Nii Nortey Dowuona — a representative of the Ga people in West Africa, in what is Ghana today — was painted in 1897 and depicts the prince in profile against loose brushstrokes of florals. Just over 2 feet tall, the small portrait is on display by the Viennese gallery Wienerroither & Kohlbacher (W&K) at the art fair TEFAF Maastricht in the Netherlands, with a price tag of €15 million (about $16.3 million). The framed painting was 'heavily soiled' with a 'barely visible' estate stamp by Klimt when two collectors contacted W&K gallery with the artwork in 2023, according to a press release by the gallery. The gallery confirmed its authenticity with art historian Alfred Weidinger, who had been searching for the work for two decades. According to the press release, the portrait was auctioned from Klimt's estate in 1923 and loaned to an exhibition in 1928 by Ernestine Klein, who had converted the artist's studio into a villa with her husband, Felix. The Jewish couple fled Vienna in 1938 to Monaco, just before World War II, but the painting's whereabouts until 2023 remained a mystery. Following extensive restoration efforts and a restitution settlement with Klein's heirs, the artwork is now making its reappearance in public. W&K says the artist painted the work during the Vienna Völkerschau of 1897; Völkerschau exhibitions were colonialist-era ethnographic displays of people popularized in 19th- and 20th-century Europe. Weidinger's research into the exhibition found that a number of people from Osu, where the prince was from, traveled to Vienna to be exhibited, and that Klimt's portrait was likely a commission but ultimately remained with the artist, Artnet reported. The 1897 portrait represents Klimt's stylistic shift 'towards decorative elements,' Weidinger said in the press release, which are the hallmarks of his later style. The Austrian painter is most recognized for the gilded couple he painted about 11 years later in 'The Kiss,' which attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors a year to Vienna's Belvedere Museum. But his 'last masterpiece' — a portrait of an unidentified woman with a fan — broke records in 2023 when it sold for £85.3 million ($108.4 million) in London from the collection of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen. It not only surpassed the artist's personal auction record, but became the most expensive artwork ever sold at a European auction. Last year, another long-lost and recovered Klimt painting, 'Portrait of Fräulein Lieser,' thought to be one of his final works, sold for €30 million ($32 million).
New York Times
04-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
At TEFAF Maastricht, Indigenous Australian Art Takes Center Stage
In a first for TEFAF Maastricht, visitors to this year's fair will encounter a booth dedicated entirely to Australia's First Nations art. The show is set to feature over a dozen artists, working from the 1960s to present day, providing a broad picture of the contemporary Indigenous Australian art movement. The Indigenous people of Australia have had an artistic tradition for thousands of years, with rock art dated to around 30,000 years ago. What will be seen in the booth, though — from eucalyptus bark paintings, collected in the mid-20th century, to the canvases of Emily Kam Kngwarray and Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri — is adaptation and innovation, as artists began painting for an audience and embracing new mediums. Created against the backdrop of 20th-century colonialism, these artworks assert cultural identity and honor ancestral lands, totems and rituals. The exhibition at TEFAF, March 15-20, is being presented by D'Lan Contemporary, a gallery based in Melbourne, Australia, at a time of surging recognition for Aboriginal Australian art. Last year, the Indigenous Australian artist Archie Moore won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale with an installation that included a huge family tree. Later this year, the National Gallery of Art in Washington will host a large-scale exhibition of more than 200 Aboriginal artworks, which will then tour across the United States and Canada. 'Art has built important bridges between Aboriginal people and the wider world,' said Philip Watkins, a man of Arrernte, Warumungu and Larrakia heritage, and the chief executive of Desart, an organization that represents Aboriginal-owned art centers in Australia, in a phone interview. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
04-03-2025
- Business
- New York Times
At TEFAF Maastricht, a Class for Curators Demystifies the Art Market
Many major museum curators have Ph.D.s, and yet some are going back to school this month during an art fair in Maastricht, the Netherlands. Last year, the European Fine Art Foundation, the nonprofit organization that puts on the fair, held its first Curator Course. The coming second edition will have 10 participants from museums all over the world, including the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Hong Kong Palace Museum and the Frans Hals Museum, based in the nearby Dutch city of Haarlem. The five-day course — unusual for an art fair — is intended for what TEFAF calls 'emerging' curators. It includes lectures, panel discussions and mentoring sessions on topics ranging from insuring artworks to negotiating and fund-raising to acquire them, as well as a peek into TEFAF's process for vetting objects. The curators' museums pick up their expenses for the trip; there is no charge for the course itself. The idea is that although curators have expertise about the importance and history of the objects in their charge, some savvy about the buying and selling process is necessary when it comes to making acquisitions for their museums. 'Most curators don't have the opportunity to get involved in the market and learn about it,' said Paul van den Biesen, TEFAF's head of museums and collectors. 'We wanted to bridge that gap.' Van den Biesen conceived of the course. 'We had an informal dinner after one of the board meetings,' he said. 'Someone asked, 'What would your dream for TEFAF be?' And mine was to start a course for curators.' He runs it in partnership with Rachel Pownall, a professor of art and finance at Maastricht University, who leads the course with help from guest lecturers and specialists. She noted that for 2024, there were around 80 applications for the 10 spots. The Maastricht fair is known for attracting the leaders of art institutions. Last year, the fair logged visits from 525 museum directors and 622 museum curators. 'The fair is sold on, 'This is where the museums go to shop,'' said James Rolleston, a London dealer of English furniture and Asian works of art, particularly from China and Japan, who is exhibiting at this year's event. In the 2024 class of the TEFAF Curator Course, some were veterans of the fair and others had never attended it. Katharina Weiler, a decorative arts curator at Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt, works with a collection of some 40,000 objects and did the course last year. 'The job is preserving the existing collection, but it also means adding to the collection,' Weiler said. 'What made me curious about the curator course is the insight into the art market and its players, and it gave me deeper insight into those dynamics.' Weiler had been to other art fairs but never to TEFAF Maastricht, and she knew it by reputation as a 'must-go' fair, she said. Weiler was duly impressed, calling it a 'playground of the most magnificent objects, all in one place.' By contrast, Ada de Wit, a curator of decorative art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, has been to every edition of the Maastricht fair since 2010. De Wit formerly worked at the Wallace Collection in London, which does not acquire new work, and it was her 2023 move to the Cleveland museum, which does collect, that made the course attractive. 'I liked talking to dealers about how they see those transactions,' de Wit said. 'It's hard for museums to compete with private buyers, who can move much faster. There's prestige in selling to a museum, but also risk.' De Wit did have some constructive feedback. 'It's a new course but I think they need to fine-tune the program by defining the target group,' she said. 'It wasn't always clear what the experience level of curators was supposed to be.' Overall, de Wit said the course was 'a great initiative,' especially discussions about provenance, the history of an object's whereabouts and ownership. 'That's increasingly important in the art world, especially in the decorative arts,' she said. Tara Contractor, an assistant curator of European painting and sculpture at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, will be getting her first taste of the TEFAF fair as a participant in the course next week. 'I'm pretty new to art fairs,' said Contractor, a British painting specialist whose Philadelphia museum role is her first curator job. She noted that in January she attended New York's Winter Show, a fair with strength in traditional artworks. Even at a major institution like the Philadelphia Museum, her department would likely acquire a very small number of works in a year, she said. But she was already strategizing possible acquisitions from TEFAF, since dealers have already revealed some of their offerings. 'I have my eye on some women artists,' Contractor said. 'That's a priority here these days. There are some works I'm excited by.' She declined to say which ones, lest she tip her hand to the competition. On the last day of this year's course, the curators will make what the fair calls 'acquisition presentations' to Wim Pijbes, formerly the director of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and now TEFAF's global chairman of vetting. It is the course's equivalent of a final exam. 'They learn to tell a narrative about how an acquisition will fit a collection,' Pownall, the Maastricht University professor, said. Weiler said that she did not initiate any acquisitions from her time at last year's fair, noting that her museum is a publicly funded one. 'I envied my American colleagues who came with a budget and went on a shopping tour,' she said. 'It's a very competitive market.' But she may have a chance to use some of the skills she learned in the coming months and years, particularly from the acquisition presentation exercise. She has her eye on a 13th-century reliquary casket from Limoges, France, that could be bought in honor of the museum's 150th anniversary in 2027. Weiler, who also intends to be at the Maastricht fair next week, said, 'If you really want something, you have to know how to convince others.'
