Grisebach's 2021 summer auctions will take place from 9-11 June in Berlin. Six catalogues with modern and contemporary art, as well as photography and 19th-century paintings, have been compiled, making these auctions a major highlight of the year.
The main focus is on the 45-lot auction 'From Emil Nolde to Neo Rauch - Selected Works', which will take place on 10 June. Here, masterpieces by German and international artists such as Franz Marc, Alexej von Jawlensky, Fernando Bolero and Hermann Max Pechstein will be on offer.
For the museum-worthy work, Dreams II by Heinrich Vogeler, the Worpswede painter used his wife and muse Martha as model. Entirely in the Art Nouveau style, it is a reminder of how the Pre-Raphaelites influenced this art movement in general and Vogeler in particular.
A particularly large landscape painting for the artist's oeuvre is Max Liebermann's Riders in the avenue near Sakrow. The work contains the sun shadows typical of Liebermann, which captures light falling through the trees and onto the earth. The work was sold by Paul Cassirer in 1925 to the Cologne department store owner and art collector Alfred Tietz.
Another highlight of the offer is one of Emil Nolde's earliest sunflower pictures. The work, executed in 1928, captivates with its interplay of close-up and distant perspectives, as well as a charming play of colours, applied to the wooden picture carrier with pastose brushstrokes.
A truly unique opportunity comes up with this work by Carl Grossmann: it is the only self-portrait that the representative of New Objectivity completed. The painting has been privately owned since it was sold in the Berlin gallery Nierendorf in 1930.
The Düsseldorf painter Konrad Klapheck occupies a special position in post-war art as his works cannot be clearly assigned to any movement. Instead, he mixed different currents such as hyperrealism, surrealism and pop art. An excellent example of this is the present painting, Similar Parents, from 1959.
In keeping with the tradition of the trompe-l'œil, Gerhard Richter completed his fifteen paintings in the Cover sheet series between 1965 and 1966. The only work in this series that is horizontally oriented is on offer here.
The collage Author from 1994 is by the most important representative of the New Leipzig School, Neo Rauch. The work, which is almost monumental in size at 243.4 x 247 cm, is available on the art market for the first time in thirty years.
However, 'Selected Works' isn't the only summer auction at Grisebach that deserves our attention. The event is framed by five further sales with top-class art.
It begins with art of the 19th century, which will be auctioned on 9 June. Particularly noteworthy here are four drawings by Adolph Menzel, including a preparatory sketch for his famous painting Flute Concert of Frederick the Great in Sanssouci and the humorous scene Early in the morning on the night express train, which has been on public display for more than 100 years.
We also come across a special discovery in the photography auction, which starts on 9 June. The photographer Ernest-James Bellocq, known for his nude images, shot prostitutes in his hometown with Storyville Portraits, New Orleans. The photos from 1911-13 were rediscovered and reproduced by photographer Lee Friedländer in the '70s.
The unique collection of the Cologne photographer August Sander, which includes several works by the painter Franz Wilhelm Seiwert, a friend of Sander, will be offered in a special auction on 10 June. The top lot is Mural for a photographer created in 1925, which, like many other lots in the auction, is appearing on the art market for the first time.
After the auction of modern art on the morning of 11 June, Grisebach's 'Contemporary Art' auction closes the auction series at night. Here, too, national and international masters are in the spotlight.
The gouache Two Women from 1958 by Joseph Beuys is also on offer. At the time that this was made, Beuys was in a melancholy phase of creation and wanted to give up art due to lack of success at the time.
Andy Warhol's portfolio Flash – November 22, 1963 will be called up alongside five other works by the Pop Artist. The subject of the series of eleven colour serigraphs from 1968 is the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy, who was shot in Dallas on 22 November 1963.