Unique works from every era displayed by 130 galleries.
Excellence Magazine is proud to be an official media partner of BRAFA, which will take place from January 26th to February 2nd at Brussels Expo. BRAFA will be welcoming art lovers and collectors from all over Europe and beyond. 130 exhibitors from 16 countries will be presenting a selection of exquisite works from all eras and continents combined. Each of them, like all the other works on display, will be scrutinised by a hundred international experts before the opening of the Fair. More than 20 specialities, including paintings, furniture, sculptures and rare objects from Antiquity to the present day will be on offer at a wide range of prices, from a few thousand euros to seven figures.
A sneak preview of 15 must-sees
This sculpture of exceptional technical skill is an absolute masterpiece within the fifteenth-century Venetian production of wooden crucifixes. The figure of the Christ has been obtained from two alder wood valves, which have been hollowed out and fit together perfectly. We can attribute it to around 1490, the golden age of the Venetian Renaissance. The attribution to Michele Linder from Hamburg, resident in the district of Santi Marcuola and Fortunato, has been strongly corroborated. Linder was one of the most esteemed wood carvers in Venice and the most famous sculptor of ivory crucifixes.
This Flemish tapestry depicting The Martyrdom of Saint Barbara stands out as a remarkable example of sixteenth-century craftsmanship, distinguished by its exceptionally well-preserved colour palette. Bruges was a preeminent weaving centre during this period, with numerous tapestries documented in contemporary inventories. However, very few have survived, making this piece particularly rare and valuable. The depiction of the executioner brandishing a curved sabre serves as a powerful reminder of the historical context of the time, reflecting the Ottoman incursions into Central Europe. This detail aids in dating the tapestry to the second quarter of the sixteenth century.
This concave silver salver is a beautiful example of late sixteenth-century Portuguese silverware, which often served a utilitarian function in the homes of the great families of the time. Pieces like this one, richly decorated with geometric elements, scrolls and shell motifs, bear witness to the artistic sophistication and skill of Portuguese craftsmen of the period. The historical and artistic value of this object is also borne out by its presence in the collections of prestigious museums such as the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon, the Lázaro Galdiano Foundation in Madrid and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Giovanni Antonio Canal, known as Canaletto, was an Italian painter celebrated for his stunning depictions of Venetian landscapes and cityscapes. He gained popularity for his “vedute” – detailed and picturesque representations of city views – and “capricci” – imaginative architectural compositions that blended reality with fantasy. His work particularly resonated with British aristocrats on their grand tours of Venice. This work has a very fine provenance. It was painted for the artist’s great patron and agent Joseph Consul Smith, being part of a series of thirteen canvases, presumably intended to decorate the Palazzo Mangilli-Valmarana, Smith’s house on the Grand Canal just above the Rialto Bridge. In 1762, Smith sold the cream of his collection to King George III of England, including this painting.
This pedestal table, attributed to Pierre-Philippe Thomire, official chaser and gilder of the king Louis XVI, is one of a small group of similar ormolu pedestal tables with a patina finish on a griffin tripod base. One is in the Musée Nissim de Camondo in Paris, acquired from the supplier Seligmann, as being by Thomire, another was in the collection of Boniface de Castellane and Anna Gould at the Palais Rose, Paris, sold at Christie’s Paris on 7 March 2017, lot 116. Another example was in the collection of Helena Rubinstein and John Dorrance and now belongs to Dalva Brothers, New York.
This “Magician book” is the only known automaton in the shape of a book with a question-and-answer mechanism, preserved in its original leather case with the original instructions. When the mechanism is activated, it reveals a magician standing on a terrace overlooking Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc. This book, described as the most astonishing automaton in the collection of Dr. Maurice Sandoz (1892-1958), was his personal favourite. He used it as a guest book, where visitors to his spectacular collection of automatons in his villa in Burier, Switzerland, could leave their impressions afterwards (Revue de Voyages, June 1958). Notable guests included Anna von Bismarck, Prince and Princess Frederick of Prussia, Prince and Princess Doria Pamphili, Clémentine of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Charlie Chaplin and his wife, among others. During his lifetime, Maurice Sandoz only lent the book once, for the 1950 exhibition at La Vieille Russie in New York.
Presented at the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris, this bed was part of a complete bedroom set. This work is highly indicative of the Egyptomania that swept through the 19th century. Far beyond merely borrowing a few motifs from the ornamental repertoire of Ancient Egypt, as could be done in the Empire style at the turn of the century, its creator cabinetmaker Louis Malard multiplied the references in order to create a work with a unique style. This is reflected in the size of the bed, its architectural canopy and the life-size seated figures acting as bedside tables on either side, echoing the posture of the immense Egyptian seated statues.
This mask is a female “kikashi” mask, as indicated by the two-tone white and black, the absence of a sagittal crest and the flat nose. Amongst Songye masks, a general distinction was made in reference to the function of male and female masks. Male masks (bifwebebalume) were used in rites of passage. On the other hand, female masks (bifwebe bakashi), which appeared on the occasion of the death or investiture of a chief and during lunar rites, were an integral part of the symbolic composition of these rituals, animating benevolent spiritual forces through dance.
This tiara was made in Paris in 1909 by Maison Chaumet for the wedding of the daughter of the Count and Countess de Heeren. It features a series of rounded Greek motifs, set with 2096 diamonds, mounted in platinum and gold, with a typical ‘mille-grain’ finish. While most tiaras of the period were in the guirlande or traditional style of the 19th century, this piece is an early example of the geometric aesthetic that was to define the Art Deco period, which reached its apogee in the 1920s. Founded in 1780, Maison Chaumet has designed more than 2000 stunning tiaras.
This extremely rare, high-quality set comes from the Schneider factory, founded in Épinay-sur-Seine in 1913 by Ernest and Charles Schneider. Charles Schneider was one of the undisputed masters of French-style glass and crystal, and a member of the Nancy School, the movement behind the expansion of Art Nouveau in France and elsewhere. These works were discovered over a period of thirty years on the French and Dutch art markets.
This rosewood desk was created in 1959 by the Danish artist-designer Bodil Kjaer and manufactured by E. Pedersen & Son in Denmark as part of a project for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The design is pure with clear, refined lines. It is famous for having been used in several films, including three James Bond films. This desk model has featured in celebrity collections including those of the actor Michael Caine, the pianist Oscar Peterson and Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh.
The rhomboidal canvas and the high number of incisions – fourteen – cut in three discreet bands on a white background, make this work a very rare example in Fontana’s output. The movement and distribution of these incisions are a measure of energy and dispersion. The power of this work, which is irregular in form, is linked to its rejection of pictorial norms and its audacity in suggesting a new art form. This unique work could be seen as an anticipation of the artist’s “Quanta” series, a group of works that Fontana created between 1959 and 1960.
Shirley Jaffe was born in 1923 in New Jersey. She studied at Cooper Union in New York, which she left for Paris, where she settled in 1949. She was a close friend of Jean-Paul Riopelle and Sam Francis and is regarded as a major painter of the new abstraction. Later associated with Kimber Smith, Jack Youngerman and Al Held, she sublet Louise Bourgeois’ studio in the same street as Joan Mitchell. When she died in 2016, the American painter left behind a rich body of abstract work, a significant part of which was donated to the French state, integrating the collections of the Musée national d’art moderne in 2019.
Günther Uecker has for six decades developed his reliefs comprising dynamic arrangements of nails. In the 1950s, influenced by Eastern philosophy and Gregorian chanting, he began a ritual of hammering nails. These materials were synonymous with protection for the artist, who remembers nailing boards to the windows of his house when Soviet troops invaded after the Second World War. In 1957, he used nails on canvases to create an optical ‘sundial’ effect, projecting light and shadow in ephemeral patterns. In 1961, Uecker joined Heinz Mack and Otto Piene in the anti-expressionist movement Group Zero, which rejected the traditional dimensions of the canvas to explore kinetic, serial and participatory domains.
Like Giorgio de Chirico’s ‘Manichini’ or metaphysical mannequins, which reject the face as a symbol of status and identity, Female Composition perfectly encapsulates Condo’s concept of Artificial Realism. Through this portrait, he mocks the traditional representations of femininity as seen in the works by Rembrandt and Picasso. This ironic interpretation depicts a faceless woman with breasts, a cape, necklace, as well as a head topped with a hat and a carrot.
Joana Vasconcelos, guest of honour of Brafa Art Fair
Joana Vasconcelos is a Portuguese visual artist, born in 1971. Over the course of her 30-year career, she has made use of a wide variety of media. Although she has a preference for textiles, Joana Vasconcelos also works with cement, metal, ceramics, glass, and found objects. Her ambition is to decontextualise everyday objects and revisit the concept of craft in the twenty-first century.
At BRAFA 2025, she will be exhibiting two Valkyries, sculptures inspired by the female figures from Norse mythology who flew over the battlefields, bringing the bravest warriors back to life to join the deities in Valhalla. Made from textiles, they give full expression to the artist’s creativity, involving a variety of fabrics, crochet elements, embroidery and a feast of ornaments such as sequins, braids, tassels and hundreds of LED lights, which simulate an effect of vibration and combine traditional craftsmanship with technological methods.
Her international reputation was consolidated in 2005, at the first Venice Biennale curated by women, where she presented her artwork The Bride, a classically shaped chandelier whose crystal pendants had been replaced by approximately 14,000 tampons. Joana Vasconcelos was the youngest artist and the first woman to exhibit at the Château de Versailles in 2012. In 2018, she became the first Portuguese artist to have a solo show at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. In 2023, she had the honour of exhibiting at the Uffizi Galleries and the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, alongside great masters such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Caravaggio.
