On 15-16 February, the Pforzheim-based auction house Kiefer is offering an extensive selection of almost 8,000 lots of art, graphics, numerous antique books, manuscripts, antiques and photography.
Here are some of the highlights which includes an interesting selection of top international artists.
Spain
An interesting work up for grabs is Makemono by the Catalan artist Joan Miró. It is a colour lithograph which Miró executed on Shandong silk. The silk train measures an impressive 41 x 970 cm and is, like a Chinese scroll, rolled up on two wooden sticks. A painted box made of oak wood is used to store the printed silk roll. The graphic work was produced in 1956 and appeared in a limited edition of only 50 copies.
In an edition of 90 copies that appeared in 1980 is a suite with 10 original colour lithographs by Antoni Tàpies, who was born, like Joan Miró, in Barcelona. All sheets of the suite are signed by the artist and numbered and stamped.
The surrealism of Salvador Dalí is also represented in the auction. Here collectors can look forward to two original copper plates from Dix recettes d'immortalité from 1973. The 11 leaves of Dalí's first book-object are all signed and numbered. They are kept in a Plexiglas case with bronze fittings in the shape of fried eggs and a handle in the form of a telephone receiver.
France
Marc Chagall's illustration of Moses and the Ten Commandments served as a composition for the exhibition Chagall et la Bible, which took place in the summer of 1962 at the Musée Rath in Geneva. More specifically, it is one of the few specimens that hasn’t been labelled. A pencil signature of the artist can be found in the lower right corner.
Italy
Two absolute highlights for every opera fan come from Alessandro Sanquirico, the most important stage designer of La Scala in Milan in the first half of the 19th century. There are eight aquatint tablets with the stage sets that Sanquirico had designed for the production of L'ultimo giorno di Pompei (‘The Last Day of Pompeii’) in 1827. Only a few copies of this collection appeared in the trade. Even rarer is another collection with 62 aquatint tablets from 1827. Shown here are the stage sets for various operas, which were mostly located in places such as Egypt or Greece. Under Alessandro Sanquirico's expertise and creativity, the scala scenes were the best of their time.
Germany
One of the earliest masters of the graphic woodcut was Albrecht Dürer. After he had settled in 1497 as an independent artist in his hometown of Nuremberg, a year later, The Revelation of St. John, his first significant graphic work, and the first Latin edition, was produced in pine with the opening of the fifth and sixth seal. Dürer's contemporary and painter colleague Lucas Cranach acted as a printmaker, and an early work by his hand is available with the woodcut of Saint Christopher.
Netherlands
The Dutch Baroque master Rembrandt, who died 350 years ago in 1669, handed down around 300 etchings, and 80 of the accompanying copper plates survived the times. At Kiefer Auction House, a contemporary deduction of the work of Jesus among the scribes, which used to be part of the collection of the National Museum Stockholm, is up for sale.
The auctions for the upcoming auction at Kiefer will commence on 15 February and run until the 16th.
