The 225th auction is the largest in the history of Villa Grisebach. From 28 to 31 May, a total of 1650 works of art will be sold in seven auctions at an average estimate of 23 million euros. The top lot of the auction is a major work of German Expressionism created exactly one hundred years ago, Heinrich Campendonk's museum-like "Landscape with Two Cows", which is estimated at 2 to 3 million euros and was last shown in a Campendonk retrospective in 1960.
With its spring auction, Villa Grisebach is emphasising its role as a leading house for German art from the 19th to the 21st century. Starting with two drawings by Caspar David Friedrich, through major works by Joseph Anton Koch and Franz von Stuck, Brücke Expressionism and the Blaue Reiter, to special works of post-war modernism by Joseph Beuys, Josef Albers, Hermann Glöckner and Konrad Klapheck and contemporaries Neo Rauch, Sigmar Polke and Georg Baselitz. After the painting by Campendonk, the German offering is dominated in terms of price by a furious floral still life by Lovis Corinth and an almost life-size bust of a woman by Wilhelm Lehmbruck, both estimated at 400,000 to 600,000 euros.
At the same time, the internationality of the post-1945 art on offer is particularly high this time, for example with paintings by Dubuffet, Jean Fautrier and Hans Hartung, installations by Ilya Kabakov and Jannis Kounellis as well as drawings by Miro, Giacometti, Matisse, Picasso and Chillida, two of whose extraordinary sculptures are also on offer.
The auction week begins on 28 May with the "19th Century" and "Photography" auctions and continues on Thursday, 29 May with the "ORANGERY" auction (for example with an ivory carving by Jacob Auer from the 17th century for 200,000 to 300,000 euros). The evening auction "Selected Works" will take place on 29 May at 17:00. On Friday, 30 May, "Classical Modernism" and "Contemporary Art" will be accompanied by their own catalogues, before the "Third Floor" on Saturday will bring the anniversary auction to a close with works with estimates of up to 3,000 euros.