This year’s TEFAF will take place from the 7th to the 16th of March. Art lovers and collectors are expected from every corner of the globe to attend the event, where more than 220 exhibitors from throughout Europe and North America will offer a panoply of works whose total value is estimated at over 1 billion euros.

Today, the international art market is booming like never before.  A new report, commissioned by TEFAF and released last month, reveals that worldwide sales doubled over the four years leading up to 2006, when total annual sales amounted to EUR 43.3 billion, the highest ever recorded.

The event first took place in 1975 as the “Pictura Fine Art Fair”, which hosted 28 exhibitors specialising in Old Master paintings and Medieval sculptures.  Over the years it has changed names several times and grown into one of the world’s premiere venues for dealers and collectors of every kind of art from classical to contemporary, as well a vast array of antiques and decorative objects.

In 1975 the most valuable work on offer was a painting valued at the equivalent of about 8000 of today’s euros.  At last year’s show, one of the highlights was the most expensive Ancient Chinese bronze figure ever to come to market – a wine beaker in the form of a small pig-like animal, called a tapir.  The exquisite figure, cast in the 4th or 3rd century BC, in the midst of the Warring States Period, sold for EUR 12 million, well above the expected price of just under ten million.