Europe

Brussels gears up for its major art and antiques fair this month with the latest edition of BRAFA.

While BRAFA understandably dominates much of the cultural headlines during this period, it is not the only show in town.

BRAFA has long been a fair with a speciality in early (medieval and Renaissance) works of art, which is something that dates back to the years when it was a Belgian National fair in the city centre. It thus serves a venerable collecting tradition drawing in buyers from the local area and further afield.

Tribal art has long been a Belgian speciality due to the country’s colonial history in Africa. So it is not surprising to see this area well represented at BRAFA, with around a dozen participants in this field hailing from Paris, Brussels and as far away as Montreal.

Antiquities is one of BRAFA’s strong suits in terms of exhibitor volume. Around 10 specialists in this field are standing, plus a number of others that mix antiquities with, for example, Asian art.

Some of the works on offer at BRAFA are simply too quirky to fit into any time-honoured collecting category, but they are often responsible for creating an eyecatching draw to a particular stand.

A selective one-day 'Samurai Armor Fair' launches next month in Amsterdam.

The Morren Galleries in Utrecht is bringing this striking bronze Springende Haas (Leaping Hare), pictured , to Amsterdam’s First Art Fair. The work of Rotterdam sculptor Evert den Hartog, it is priced at €6750, and measures 19 x 20 x 5in (47 x 52 x 12cm).

The market for works by Ernst Wilhelm Nay (1902-68) was pushed into a new dimension at recent German auctions.

Paintings by major exponents of Expressionism almost invariably occupy many of the top slots in the modern and contemporary art sales staged in late autumn across Germany and Austria.

The potential star of the show at the sale of Selected Works held by Grisebach (25% buyer’s premium) in Berlin on November 30 lived up to its expectations.

The Marquis de Sade’s manuscript, '120 Days of Sodom', and André Breton’s 'Surrealist Manifestos' have been declared national treasures by the French government and were withdrawn from a planned auction.

Paris’ status as a centre of the tribal art market was underscored this season with a brace of high prices in the field of Oceanic art.