HELVOIRT.- The exhibition Collecting Collectors will take place in the TEFAF Paper section and will offer visitors a small but choice selection of master drawings and prints from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen which were acquired over the last 167 years. A particular highlight of the collection are the works by Fra Bartolommeo (1473 -1517), numbering 400 sheets with 500 drawings assembled in two luxury albums by Florentine collector Niccolò Gabburri in 1729. One of the albums will be included in the selection at TEFAF Maastricht 2016, as a prelude to the forthcoming large Fra Bartolommeo exhibition in Rotterdam in the autumn of 2016.

The collection of prints and drawings is the largest subset of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen’s collection, containing around 17,000 drawings and 65,000 prints. It provides an overview of western art history from the Middle Ages until the present day. Included in the exhibition are works by old masters such as Albrecht Dürer, Lucas van Leyden and Rembrandt van Rijn to modern and contemporary artists like Paul Cézanne, Salvador Dalí, René Magritte and Yayoi Kusama.

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is named after two collectors who both were essential in the establishment of the museum’s international reputation – Frans Boijmans (1767-1847) and D.G. van Beuningen (1877-1955). Boijmans’ bequest founded the museum in 1849 and in 1940 Van Beuningen acquired and then donated the majority of the Franz Koenigs collection of master drawings. Other eminent collectors who contributed greatly to the collections were Dr. Adriaan Domela Nieuwenhuis (1850-1935) and Dr. Johan Bierens de Haan (1867-1951).

TEFAF Maastricht, the world’s leading art fair, is renowned for its commitment to excellence, expertise and elegance. This is reflected not only in the magnificent range of rare works that are offered for sale at the fair, which will be held in the MECC Maastricht from 11-20 March, 2016, but also in the number of art collectors, both private and institutional, that regard TEFAF as a mustsee event in the international art market calendar.