It’s nothing less than electrifying: On 30th November 2023, Caspar David Friedrich’s Karlsruher Skizzenbuch of 1804 will be offered for sale at Grisebach – the first time ever one of the artist’s bound sketchbooks has surfaced on the auction market. Privately held until now, it is the last of the booklets known to have belonged to Friedrich and will be the highlight of this year’s Winter Auctions at Grisebach (EUR 1,000,000/1,500,000). Of the around twenty sketchbooks the great Romantic artist once owned, only six survive - four are held by the National Museum in Oslo, while a fifth forms part of the collection of Dresden’s Kupferstichkabinett. For nearly two centuries, the Karlsruher Skizzenbuch was preserved by the descendants of Georg Friedrich Kersting, a close friend and fellow artist who painted the most important portraits of Friedrich and who came to own the Skizzenbuch either during Friedrich’s lifetime or shortly thereafter (press release of 9th October 2023).
Another top lot of the Selected Works auction is Wolken überm Meer I, a masterwork of focused intensity by Lyonel Feininger, who is currently being given his first major retrospective in Germany in over 25 years at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt. In this painting from 1923, the artist deploys formal means to radical effect in capturing the atmospheric experience of the open expanses against the horizon. With its towering cloud formations boldly broken down into block-like flat surfaces, the composition marks a key turning point in Feininger’s transition to a more abstract visual style (EUR 800,000/1,200,000).
The 1950 painting Mohn und blaue Lupinen by Emil Nolde is another example of an artist’s encounter with nature. In particular poppy flowers, whose striking form and colour stand out so markedly from the wide spaces of the landscape, were a motif the artist returned to time and again. Our painting is the expressive culmination of Nolde’s nearly 50 years of working on floral still lifes, which were the primary source of inspiration for his brightly hued painterly style (EUR 800,000/1,200,000). We are delighted to be offering it along with a further masterpiece by the artist: In Demut from 1946, a dramatic juxtaposition between radiantly glowing colours and an introspective mood (EUR 700,000/900,000).
In the years before his emigration from Germany, landscapes played a highly narrative role in the oeuvre of Max Beckmann. His parkscapes are “artificial worlds that deal in a very fundamental way with fantasies of creative power and creative depletion.” The idyll of Springbrunnen in Baden-Baden is a deceptive one. What seems like a mere vista of the spa resort’s park at noon on a spring day gradually reveals a sense of confinement and stasis that pervades the scene, belying its apparent innocence. Like no other of the artist’s paintings of Baden-Baden, it is dominated by nuanced green tones. Beckmann needed the colour green for its ability to “soothe his soul” (EUR 700,000/1,000,000).
The remote fishing village of Jershöft on the East Pomeranian coast was a recurring motif for Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, a leading exponent of German Expressionism. But although he often showed the hamlet bathed in the rays of a scorching run, rarely did he capture the atmosphere of a sultry midsummer day so incisively as in his gaily coloured Bootshaus in Jershöft (Rettungshaus am Strand) from 1920 (EUR 600,000/800,000).
The Selected Works Auction on 30th November also will include several high-quality works by Ernst Wilhelm Nay: Alpha, from 1957, a paragon of his “disc paintings,” with its powerful colours arranged in consummate compositional density (EUR 400,000/600,000); the luminescent Gelb-Orange-Kobalt I from 1967 (EUR 200,000/300,000); the cheerful, masterfully executed Angelika from 1946 (EUR 120,000/150,000); and Fischer, a significant composition from 1936 (EUR 120,000/150,000).
Further prime exemplars of post-War art will include 21.07.50-Saint-Jeoire - Montagne jaune from 1950, a yellow-dominated composition highly characteristic of the work of Zao Wou-Ki, a French painter with Chinese roots (EUR 400,000/600,000), as well as René Magritte’s famous small painting La Malédiction from 1963, where his signature cloud formations hover over the sky like unsettlingly foreign objects (EUR 300,000/400,000).
Of particular note are the works on offer from the collection of Johanna and Leslie Garfield, the husband-and-wife collectors from New York City who focused on German Expressionism. The spectacular highlights here are George Grosz’ large-scale watercolour Nächtliche Szene, Berlin from 1925 (69.3 x 98.5 cm, EUR 300,000/400,000), along with two extensive portfolio works by Max Beckmann, Gesichter from 1919 (EUR 40,000/60,000) and Berliner Reise from 1922 (EUR 50,000/70,000). Further works from the Leslie & Johanna Garfield Collection will be featured in our Modern Art auction on 1st December 2023. Grisebach will also hold a special auction devoted to over 80 works from this important trove of German Expressionist graphic art in February of 2024.
Our curated evening auction also brings together a carefully selected and diverse range of works of contemporary art. The imposing oil Untitled from 2011 by Danish painter Per Kirkeby practically invites the viewer to climb inside its monumental, abstract landscape and embark on long expeditions. It exemplifies the influence that Kirkeby’s experiences in Greenland exerted on his art throughout his life (EUR 350,000/550,000). By contrast, Günther Förg’s Untitled, an impressive painting on lead from 1990 (EUR 250,000/350,000), gives the viewer a sense of melting into the almost oceanic expanse of the horizon. Die schöne Hausfrau (1967) by Konrad Klapheck, who died in July of this year, forms part of that major series of works centering on water faucets and shower heads in which, by imbuing the scene with his signature sense of exaggerated narrative, the artist allows us to imagine that these objects actually have some sort of personal, even family rapport with one another – involving sympathy, antipathy or, in this case, even sexual attraction (EUR 180,000/240,000).
Last but not least is A.R. Penck’s Soldato convenzionale, created in 1990, the year of German reunification. Using his highly symbolic visual idiom, the artist produces an impressively dense work that showcases his unsurpassed ability to translate the history of Germany’s post-war division into a visual narrative (EUR 160,000/200,000).
Great Women Artists at Grisebach: Here the focus is on exciting, top-quality works by internationally established women artists, especially in the realm of contemporary art. Ladder Rising by the American painter Alice Baber from 1965 was one of the works featured in her first individual exhibition in Germany (EUR 20,000/30,000). Christa Dichgans’s paintings Puppe (EUR 15,000/20,000) and Clown, both from 1969, reflect the artist’s preoccupation with toys and playthings. The installation Andere Bedingung (Aggregatzustand 1) (EUR 40,000/60,000) and the sculpture Watch (Münz) (EUR 12,000/15,000), two works by Alicja Kwade typical of her oeuvre, present theoretical meditations on the physical laws of time and space. Self-Effacing Management Politics, a bronze from 2016 by French artist Camille Henrot, forms part of her Desktop Series (EUR 35,000/45,000). Himmelswurzeln by Rebecca Horn is a large paper work from 2013 (EUR 30,000/40,000). Works by two contemporary women artists from Austria and one from Switzerland round out this impressive line-up: Martha Jungwirth’s large-format water colour Untitled from 2007 (EUR 30,000/40,000), Maria Lassnig’s Denkerin from 1981, a typical self-portrait (EUR 60,000/80,000) and, finally, Verena Loewensberg’s virtuosic painting Untitled from 1972 (EUR 40,000/60,000).
Leading the 19th Century Art sale is Philipp Otto Runge’s Bildnis des Bruders Jakob Runge from April/May 1801, one of the last large drawings by the artist to have remained in private hands. In this intimately rendered portrait, Runge expresses his affection for his brother Jakob along with his own homesickness (EUR 250,000/350,000). Alte Elbbrücke bei Meissen is another rare work by Caspar David Friedrich which we are privileged to offer. Likewise originating from the estate of Georg Friedrich Kersting, it is the only watercolour study of this visual motif the artist elaborated in colour, as well as a very early example of Friedrich’s conceptual use of closely framed vistas (EUR 200,000/300,000). A further highlight is Friedrich Nerly’s early, spectacular oil study on paper Blick auf Venedig im Abendlicht, an iconic view of the famous Venetian skyline (EUR 100,000/150,000).
All told, the four Winter Auctions to be held on 30th November and 1st December will feature 549 artworks with a lower-range estimate totalling 22 million euros.
The previews of all works will be held from 22nd until 29th November in Berlin at Fasanenstrasse 25 and 27. Caspar David Friedrich’s Karlsruher Skizzenbuch will remain on view in Zurich until 8th November. It will then be shown in New York from 11th to 15th November and finally in Berlin from 22nd until 29th November.