If our eyes could hear, then it would be the orotund tones of the trumpet in Lyonel Feininger’s Trompetenbläser im Dorf, the 1915 masterwork leading this season´s sale. This multifaceted painting, vibrating with colour, from the artist’s estate is most decidedly a work of first-rank museum quality (EUR 2,000,000/3,000,000).
The other showstoppers in the “Selected Works” auction come from the storied Blaue Reiter circle. August Macke’s idyllic Mann auf Bank from 1913 is exceptional for the way the artist captures light within a pared-down palette of pigments – a painting in which colour as such attains a new weight, quality, and brilliance (EUR 900,000/1,200,000). In Blaue Kuh, a work painted in tempera around the same time, Franz Marc elevates the cow into an unexpectedly potent, awe-inspiring creature using his favorite, symbolic colour scheme of blue, yellow, and red (EUR 700,000/900,000).
The Expressionistic Sonnenflecken, which Max Pechstein painted in 1922 in Leba, his preferred getaway on the Baltic Coast, conveys an enchanted eventide mood imbued with poetry and tranquility (EUR 400,000/600,000). Contrast this with Max Beckmann’s small but sophisticated composition Hängematte from 1942, whose innate tension and strikingly accentuated surfaces create a surprisingly monumental effect (EUR 300,000/400,000). Lovis Corinth’s Maske im weissen Kleid (Charlotte Berend) from 1902 was painted during the artist’s most important creative period and depicts his 21-year-old future wife, as seen through the magical looking glass of blossoming love (EUR 250,000/350,000). Another highlight will be an outstanding work from Hans Hartung’s later oeuvre: T 1985 - H 34 (1985), a dynamic composition of dramatically clashing contrasts (EUR 120,000/150,000).
The “Selected Works” sale likewise will showcase sensational examples of contemporary art. Such as Untitled, an impressive, never yet auctioned series of 12 paintings on lead from 1987 by Günther Förg, perhaps one of the most versatile figures on today’s art scene (EUR 300,000/400,000) – a comparable 10-part work on lead currently is held by the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. The American artist Sol LeWitt, known as an exponent of Minimalism in combination with “Concept Art,” a term which he himself coined, is represented with the iconic sculpture “Pyramid” from 1996 (EUR 200,000/300,000). Per Kirkeby’s Gegen Abend I (Towards Evening I) from 1984 is a work epitomizing the artist’s approach to visualizing his first-hand experience of nature with dramatic painted gestures (EUR 200,000/300,000). The tense standoff between anarchy and the order of “the system,” a theme informing all of the works by A.R. Penck, is brought to a hair-raising climax in the large-scale pictographic painting Stadt der Konflikte (EUR 160,000/200,000).
An exceptionally charming discovery to be featured in the 19th Century Art auction is a series of 14 floral silhouette paper cuts by Philipp Otto Runge from the estate of the Hamburg family of artists descended from Erwin and Otto Speckter (each between EUR 20,000/35,000). Some of the French Masters who wowed Berliners in the blockbuster exhibition The Most Beautiful French Come from New York (2007) will be back in town as well: Camille Corot, Théodore Rousseau, Théodore Gudin, and other early plein-air painters who paved the way for Impressionism will be represented by impressive works of their own. One painting in particular will attract attention in Munich: Joseph Karl Stieler’s “Helene Sedlmayr” from 1831/34 is a hitherto unknown second version of the famous portrait from the Schönheitengalerie in Nymphenburg Palace and was probably a gift from King Ludwig I to Helene Sedlmayr (EUR 80,000/120,000).
All told, the four “Summer Auctions” to be held on 1 and 2 June 2023 will feature 552 artworks with an aggregate median estimate of EUR 19.9 million – a 15% increase relative to the prior year.
A preview all works will take place in Berlin at three locations on Fasanenstrasse (Nos. 25, 27 and 73) from 24 to 31 May 2023.