A view of this year’s BRAFA Art Fair at Brussels Expo.
Image credit Olivier Pirard.
The event opened its doors to the public on January 29 at Brussels Expo.
Set out over two halls, the location is spacious with wide aisles and plenty of room on the stands. Exhibitors seemed pleased not only with the venue but also with its good parking facilities for visitors.
Plenty of exhibitors expressed satisfaction at being back in the traditional January time slot (last year’s BRAFA was moved to June). As several pointed out, the January staging is the date that their BRAFA clientele have become used to and put in their diaries and it also makes BRAFA the first major European fair in the annual calendar.
A ‘Raisins et Faisans’ jardiniere of c.1901 by the Belgian jeweller and silversmith Philippe Wolfers, sold by Thomas Deprez Fine Arts at BRAFA for a price in the region of €18,000.
Sales were made from the outset. Thomas Deprez Fine Arts from Brussels, whose stand featured a range of pieces by Belgian Art Nouveau designers, sold a wooden stand by Victor Horta and a silver jardiniere Faisans et Raisins by Philippe Wolfers which was priced in the region of €18,000.
Dr Lennart Booij Fine Art and Rare Items from Amsterdam sold two of his Art Nouveau vases.
Stairs by Lynn Chadwick, sold at BRAFA by the Osborne Samuel Gallery for a price in the region of €400,000.
Among the early sales by UK exhibitors the Stern Pissarro Gallery sold works by Marc Chagall, Raoul Dufy, Paul Jenkins and a painting by Yayoi Kusama priced in the region of €400,000 while Whitford Fine Art sold its Joseph Lacasse oil on canvas ‘Dominante Bleue’ from 1955-6 priced in the region of €130,000 and the Osborne Samuel Gallery sold a Lynn Chadwick sculpture, Stairs from 1990, priced in the region of €400,000.
BRAFA continues at Brussels Expo until February 5.
