The annual Shanghai Art Fair will run from November 15 through 19 at Shanghai Mart, the event's organization committee announced today. The event will include 16 exhibitions.

As the closing event of Shanghai International Art Festival, the fair will be home to works from more than 140 galleries from 14 countries, including the United States, Germany, France, Spain and Italy.

The fair, the biggest in Asia, will include 215 exhibition booths in three halls covering 22,000 square meters in the Shanghai Mart.

Exhibition halls 1 and 3 will be reserved for galleries where visitors can enjoy masterpieces from artists such as Chinese painter Zhang Daqian, Wen Huaisha and Chen Yifei, while works by foreign talents like Spanish artist Salvador Dali will also be displayed at the fair.

To encourage more young talents, Exhibition Hall 2 will hold the Emerging Artists Exhibition to show the works of art youth selected from countries across Asia. This is the second time the fair has held a youth exhibition, which was well received last year.

The fair will also be a platform for dedicate ceramic works for the first time in its 11 year history. Twenty-seven young Chinese artists will join the Contemporary Ceramic Artists Nominating Exhibition, which will be judged by nine experts.

Last year's fair attracted 58,000 visitors and professionals, 3,000 more than 2005's event. Total turnover reached 60 million yuan (US$8 million), up eight million yuan from a year earlier.

(Shanghai Daily September 21, 2007)