Paintings by Emil Nolde, Otto Mueller and Adolph Menzel, which each realised over EUR 1 million, were the highlights of Grisebach's spring auctions in Berlin. Emil Nolde's "Weiße Wolken" (White Clouds) from 1926 tops the price list with EUR 1.5 million* (estimate EUR 1.2-1.5 million). It comes from the top-class Expressionist collection of Adalbert and Thilda Colsman, which was honoured in a special catalogue and sold almost in its entirety. Shortly afterwards, Otto Mueller's "Two Girls with a Forked Tree" from 1916 sold for EUR 1.225 million, acquired by a Scandinavian museum. This impressively underlined Grisebach's market leadership in the field of classical modernism. This also includes the EUR 325,000 (estimate EUR 180-240,000) paid by a German private collector to German and international museums for the iconic portrait of a man by Anton Räderscheidt from Cologne from 1921 - an auction record for the artist.
Adolph Menzel's pastel "Emilie in a Red Blouse", which had been restituted to the heirs of Rudolf Mosse, was sold to a Swiss private collector for EUR 1.05 million, almost three times the estimated price. Even before the auction, Grisebach had succeeded in selling Ludwig von Hofmann's symbolic painting "Frühlingssturm", also from the Mosse collection, to a private patron who will make it available to the Museum auf der Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt. The "19th Century Art" auction thus realised a total of EUR 3.1 million, almost doubling the median estimate.
Overall, Grisebach enjoyed great success with collections entrusted to the company. In addition to works from the Colsman and Mosse collections and the Eugen Roth collection, the Klütsch collection of concrete German post-war art also sold extremely well. With a median estimate of EUR 170,000, the collection realised sales of over EUR 460,000, with high hammer prices for works by Günther Uecker, Klaus Staudt and Adolf Luther. A late work by the Japanese painter Kazuo Shiraga, which will go to a French private collection, topped the very successful "Contemporary Art" auction with a gross sale of over EUR 3 million at EUR 500,000. A brick caviar painting by Georg Herold stood out at the top of the very successful German art of the 1970s and 1980s with EUR 87,000 (estimate EUR 30,000 to 40,000).
A total of 1500 works of art were sold in seven auctions over the four days for a total of EUR 18.8 million, with a median estimate of EUR 19.5 million.
In autumn, Grisebach celebrates its 30th anniversary and will mark this event with a major anniversary auction.
Micaela Kapitzky
* All results incl. buyer's premium