Auction no. 279
on 29 November 2017, 6 pm
On Wednesday, 29 November, over 200 lots of modern and contemporary photography will be auctioned at Grisebach in Berlin.
The top lot of the auction is a vintage print by Edward Steichen, the "patriarch of photography". The "Foxgloves", created in 1926, is a print personally selected by Steichen, which probably served as the artwork for his book "Steichen. The Photographer". The outstanding quality, the sharpness of the image and the extraordinary feel of the photograph reveal a sensuality and plasticity that is exceptional - even within the New Objectivity movement (EUR 50,000/70,000).
Otto Steinert characterised German photography of the 1950s and 1960s like hardly anyone else. Steinert was the founder and influential representative of subjective photography and co-founder of the avant-garde group fotoform. The "Appell" from our auction, dated 1950, testifies to the fact that the creative realisation of images played an increasingly important role in his work from 1945 onwards. (EUR 12,000/15,000).
One of Mies van der Rohe's rare, surviving photomontages will also be auctioned. The technique of collaging and montage was an important new form of representation in the 1920s. Mies used the montage of an unrealised design for a bank and office building on Stuttgart's Hindenburgplatz for a competition in 1928. Mies van der Rohe, still unreservedly the most important architect of the 20th century, owes this reputation not least to his innovative use of the new visual media (EUR 10,000/ 15,000).
Frank Thiel, known for his great sensitivity in depicting German history around the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification through the urban landscape of Berlin, has created a unique work: Immediately after the fall of the Wall, Thiel photographed Allied border guards and created the 12-part series, which until recently was hosted by Wolfgang Joop at the Villa Wunderkind in Potsdam (EUR 80,000/120,000).
Impressive architectural photographs of the big city were taken by Vera Lutter. In her works with the pinhole camera, the camera obscura, the photographer draws on an old medium and makes references to the origins of photography. The result is monumental, tonally reversed architectural views in which - poetically - (exposure) time has been inscribed (EUR 12,000/18,000 and EUR 15,000/20,000).
In Andreas Mühe's photographic imagery, romantic subjects merge with political signatures; he works between reality and fiction, playing with reality and appearance. In the series "A.M. - A Trip to Germany", Mühe presents a doubled Angela Merkel at symbolic locations in Germany. Proximity and distance, sublimity and alienation intermingle in this series (EUR 12,000/18,000). An overview of decades of fashion photography is provided by two portraits by Erwin Blumenfeld and a series of prints by George Hoyningen-Huene, Louis Faurer, Francois Kollar, Germaine Krull and FC Gundlach.
Other highlights from the field of modern photography include vintage works by Albert Renger-Patzsch: "Landschaft bei Bochum", 1929 (EUR 4,500/6,500), Aenne Biermann: "Spielbälle", 1929 (EUR 1,500/2.000), Robert Frank "Untitled (Boys on the Stairs)", 1947 (EUR 8,000/10,000) as well as works by August Sander, Eugene Atget, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Garry Winogrand, André Kertész, Horst P. Horst, Christer Strömholm and others.