Exhibitors at the world’s biggest art and antiques fair reduced prices by as much as 30 percent as collectors hunted for bargains from dealers as well as auctions.

Buyers at the European Fine Art Fair -- Tefaf -- in the Dutch city of Maastricht bought works by Lucio Fontana, Andy Warhol and El Greco, while some sellers said yesterday that they had increased discounts.

A record 239 dealers offered an estimated $1 billion of artworks spanning four millennia at Tefaf, which ended on March 22. The fair was the first test of whether the 373.9 million- euro ($510 million) success of Christie’s International’s Yves Saint Laurent auction in Paris last month was a one-off, or an indication that wealthy people are again looking at art as an alternative investment. Prices at other art auctions have fallen between 30 and 50 percent during the last six months.

“Tefaf is an Eldorado of billionaires,” said Paolo Vedovi, director of the Brussels-based Galerie Vedovi, specialists in modern and contemporary art. “You see people you don’t see at auctions. They want discounts.”

Established collectors who had dropped out of the contemporary-art market during the speculative boom of the last three years were returning, Vedovi said in an interview.

On the first night of the fair, he sold Fontana’s 1962 painting “Concetto Spaziale (noir),” for “a little bit less” than its asking price of 2.5 million euros.

Fontana Sale

The purchaser of the 4-foot-9-inch high black punch-holed canvas was a Swiss-based collector of Fontana who had curtailed his buying over the last two years, said Vedovi. The painting would have been priced at 3.5 million euros last year, he said.

A total of 67,755 visitors attended the 22nd annual Tefaf, a decline of 7.7 percent on last year. Fewer Americans were seen at this year’s fair, said dealers. Still, the record number of 222 international museums that visited the event was a 3.7 percent increase on 2008.

“We’ve tried to reduce prices from a year ago,” David Leiber, director of the New York-based gallery Sperone Westwater, said in an interview. “Sellers have got to be as creative as possible in this environment.”

He said the gallery sold works starting at $80,000 and leading up to $360,000, for a 1976 Warhol painting of the cocker spaniel that belonged to Peter Brant, a New York newsprint entrepreneur. The 4-foot-2-inch high polymer and silkscreen on canvas would have been priced $90,000 higher 12 months ago, said Leiber.

“I’ve reduced prices by up to 30 percent on last year,” said New York dealer Christophe Van de Weghe. “People want to get deals, it’s as simple as that.” He sold contemporary works with a total asking price of about 6 million euros.

Hanson’s Bench

The Scheringa Museum of Realist Art in the Netherlands paid 450,000 euros for Duane Hanson’s 1977 sculpture, “ Man on a Bench,” priced at 550,000 euros, said Van de Weghe.

He would not disclose the amount paid by London jewelry dealer Laurence Graff for a 1982 Jean-Michel Basquiat painting of a boxer, sold on the first night with an asking price of 3.5 million euros. Last November, a larger Basquiat boxer painting, also from 1982, sold at Christie’s, New York, for $13.5 million.

“If you show clients good works with attractive prices, then they’re interested,” said Van de Weghe.

At the “Disasters”-themed booth of London and New York dealers Daniella Luxembourg and Amalia Dayan, Warhol’s blood-red 1963 acrylic and silkscreen on canvas “5 Deaths” remained unsold at an asking price of $4.5 million. The same composition of the aftermath of a car crash sold at Sotheby’s, London, in July for 1.6 million pounds with fees.

Old Masters

About a quarter of the exhibitors at Tefaf specialize in Old Master pictures. Madrid-based gallery Caylus offered a signed 1585 painting of “Christ Embracing the Cross” by El Greco priced at 4.75 million euros. At the time of writing, the 2-foot-high canvas was reserved by a European collector at a figure close to the asking price, Enrique G. de Calderon, gallery director, said.

Dealers said visitors had more time to make decisions and were routinely making offers well below asking prices.

London-based Charles Beddington, who specializes in paintings of Italian scenes, found buyers for seven “relatively affordable” Old Master paintings at prices ranging from 10,000 euros to “well into six-figures.”

The most expensive of these was sold for about 30 percent below the asking price, said Beddington.

“I had the choice of taking a chunky six-figure offer or waiting for another collector who said he might pay nearer the asking price,” said Beddington.

Rubens Sale

“Old Master dealers have always been flexible about their prices,” said Konrad Bernheimer, director of the London- and Vienna-based dealership Bernheimer-Colnaghi. Bernheimer sold a 1611 Peter Paul Rubens oil portrait of a bearded man to a U.S. collector for an undisclosed sum under the asking price of 5.5 million euros.

The Rubens was one of at least three Old Master paintings that sold at Tefaf with asking prices of 4 million euros and over. At the time of writing, no modern or contemporary work had been sold at a comparable price level.

“Not all the results are in yet,” said London-based dealer Richard Nagy, whose 8.5 million-euro painting of a mother and child by Austrian Expressionist artist Egon Schiele was still being considered by a potential buyer after the fair had closed.

It had been possible for exhibitors to lower prices and discount works at Tefaf because “replacement costs for most things have gone down,” said Nagy.

Dealers in some other sections of the fair, such as antiquities and vintage photographs, were less keen to lower prices.

Roman Antiquities

“My best clients don’t even ask for a discount,” said James Ede of the London-based dealership, Charles Ede Ltd., which sells Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities.

“On the whole, antiquities are a much more stable, less speculative market,” said Ede, who sold a 10-inch-high Greek bronze statue of Heracles, dating from the 1st century B.C., for between 300,000 euros and 500,000 euros on the opening night.

“Prices for the best things have actually gone up 10 to 20 percent over the last 12 months,” said Ede. During the fair Ede sold 26 objects with a total value that was about 20 percent down on 2008, he said.