Auction no. 288
on 30 May 2018, 6 pm
On Wednesday, 30 May, over 200 lots of modern and contemporary photography will be auctioned at Grisebach in Berlin.
The auction's top lot is a vintage print by László Moholy-Nagy. The photogram, created during his time at the Bauhaus Weimar around 1923/25, is characterised by a picture-filling arrangement of various overlapping objects. Moholy-Nagy masterfully handles the contrast between materiality and transparency. Similar to an X-ray photograph, the objects appear to be flooded with light, form sharp contours and then disappear again in a blur. In a highly poetic way, he combines the principle of avant-garde collage with the technique of a painterly drawing in this precious one-off. (EUR 300,000 / 500,000).
František Drtikol shaped erotic photography like no other. Alongside Jaromír Funke and Jaroslav Rössler, Drtikol is one of the most important representatives of the Czech avant-garde. In this atmospheric pigment print, he shows his model in cleverly illuminated expressionist stage architecture. Through this staging, the naked body and its shadow seem to detach themselves from one another, creating a dance of seduction between light and shadow. (EUR 40,000 / 60,000).
Peter Beard found the central theme of his life in Africa. Alongside two other unique pieces, the "Ahmed Diptych" with original frame drawings by an African artist will be auctioned. The threat posed to the natural animal world by humans and civilisation is expressed here in a way that reflects Beard's own turmoil between tenderness and concern for a world threatened with extinction. (EUR 50,000 / 70,000).
Together with other avant-garde photographers, Otto Steinert developed a new, experimental pictorial aesthetic within "subjective photography", which saw the individual pictorial idea as a contrast to the pure depiction and documentation of the visible. The present photograph "Two Soldiers" can be seen as an example of this "new way of seeing". The vintage print is one of two existing prints, one of which is preserved in the Photographic Collection of the Museum Folkwang, Essen. (EUR 20,000 / 30,000).
Impressive landscape and architectural photographs were taken by Albert Renger-Patzsch. Three vintage prints from the direct estate of the architect Fritz Schupp will be auctioned, among which "Gas and Electricity", with its size and fine tonality, represents the clarity and magic of Renger-Patzsch's visual language in a particularly impressive way. (EUR 5,000 / 7,000).
An overview of decades of fashion photography is provided by two portraits by Lilian Bassman and a series of prints by Horst P. Horst, Walde Huth and William Klein. The "Pioneer Woman" (EUR 3,000 / 5,000) by the Russian Constructivist Alexander Rodchenko is one of the highlights of modern photography, as is Berenice Abbott's "Water Front: From Roof of Irving Trust Co. Building, Manhattan" (EUR 7,000 / 9,000) and Iwao Yamawaki's "Facade" (EUR 4,000 / 6,000). Examples of contemporary photographic art come from William Eggleston, Tod Papageorge, David LaChapelle, Cindy Sherman, Tom Wood, Lewis Baltz, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Thomas Ruff, Robert Mapplethorpe and others.
Previews
Berlin, 25 to 29 May 2018
Grisebach, Fasanenstraße 25, 27 and 73
Fr to Mon 10 am to 6 pm, Tue 10 am to 3 pm
Auctions
Berlin, 30 May to 2 June 2018
All catalogues and dates online at grisebach.com