240,000 euros for the beautiful Helene

Berlin Not all price expectations can currently be met. The hour-long session at the Grisebach auction of selected works on June 1 was characterized by restraint. When the hall was full, most of the surcharges went to telephones as usual. No fewer than 19 hammer prices from a total of 45 lots remained at the lower threshold of the estimated price. Here it is almost always identical to the minimum expectation of the consignor, the limit.

14 works were returned, including the main lot of the evening, Lyonel Feininger’s oil painting “Trumpeter in the Village” dated 1915. It was set at 2 to 3 million euros. Nevertheless, around 7 million euros were turned over that evening. The proceeds for the entire first half of the year, including online auctions and VAT, amounted to 18 million euros. It is mainly due to private encouragement. “Retailers only observe,” comments Grisebach shareholder Micaela Kapitzky.

This is of course a sharp drop compared to the 25 million euros last spring. But it’s also a result of sometimes mediocre consignments that lacked market-stimulating aura. The Feininger is a prime example. The dominant yellow tone of the painting is not an eye lust. A colorful version of the theme, Trumpet Players I, grossed a whopping $6.1 million at Christie’s in 2018. The yellow auction picture had just been presented at the Brussels Gallery Weekend in the Galerie de la Béraudière.

But there were also bright spots. The most expensive ticket of the evening was August Macke’s “Mann auf Bank” with a gross price of 1.1 million euros, a characteristic landscape picture in a rich shade of green. It has been in Essen’s private collection since 1957 and figured in important early exhibitions. The buyer is a north German private collector.

Max Pechstein’s harbor picture “Sonnenflecken” from 1922 was awarded a written commission from southern Germany for a gross price of 500,000 euros. Like the Macke, this is also a bid at the lower estimate.

A Beckmann petitesse in the format 24 x 36 cm is the beach portrait “Hammock”. The blue of the bath towel gives his reclining figure an attractive component. A Württemberg collector rewarded her with 400,000 euros including buyer’s premium. Expressionists are still in demand, especially in German auctions. This was even evident in a late, intensely colored still life (1952) by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, which went to a Brandenburg collector for 212,500 euros, well above the estimate.

A cheap purchase was Lovis Corinth’s half-portrait “Maske imweiße Kleid” from 1902. It depicts the artist’s wife Charlotte Berend with a fan and a black mask in an animating pose facing the viewer. The compellingly private portrait has now fetched a hammer price at the lower estimate – 312,500 Euro with premium – struck by a Berlin collector. In 1984 it was taken over by a Swiss collection at the Berlin art trade show “Orangerie” for 220,000 Deutschmarks. This is an auction buyer’s chance. If there is little competition from bidders, he will get the object of desire at a low price.

Some strong works of contemporary art were included in this evening auction. This led to a qualitative thinning out in the corresponding auction on June 2nd. There, Jonas Burgert’s surrealistic scene “Spieler” from 2008 achieved the highest hammer price with 150,000 euros. The selection of selected works in the central auction ensured secure sales.

Read here –> The time of wild speculation is over for now

What kind of art appealed to collectors in the evening auction? Four examples: A large format in strong blue, beige and brown tones, created by Hans Hartung in the final years of his life, in which incisions and a diffuse black shower of color represent the “psychic improvisation” of French Informel, was strongly requested. It ended up in a Swiss private collection for 287,500 euros.

It was foreseeable that one of Sigmar Polke’s pictorial gouaches would fetch a strong price. So it was hardly surprising that an untitled drawing by the Rhenish artist, featuring comic, raster and picture book figures, was bought by the New York trade for 175,000 euros. Shortly before, this dealer had bought AR Penck’s signal picture “City of Conflict” for 200,000 euros.

Günther Förg, who has remained popular since his death in 2013, also had well-deserved success with a twelve-part picture group in different monochrome colors. The multiple work, estimated at a maximum of 400,000 euros, was acquired by a “German collector of contemporary art” for 550,000 euros, according to the company.

Anselm Kiefer’s collage “Jakobsleiter”, dated 2003, made a big leap from the asking price of 90,000 euros. It alludes to biblical events and is one of the characteristic works by the artist, who is celebrated in France, and which express a mythical expectation of salvation. A North German collector invested 237,500 euros.

Almost 240,000 euros for the beautiful Helene

For once, two artists of the 19th century also attracted a great deal of interest. A main event of the auction, which was filled with many landscape paintings, was the sale of 14 paper cuts by the romantic Philipp Otto Runge. Seven plant drawings cut from white laid paper were first offered individually, then as a bundle.

The hammer prices for the flower and leaf cuts, which are rare in this abundance, were around 20,000 to 25,000 euros each, close to the lower estimates. The Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden acquired the first seven for a gross price of 200,000 euros and then had another four of these fragile works sold. One goes to the New York trade.

However, a portrait of a woman by the Munich court painter Joseph Karl Stieler became the coveted star of the 19th century department. It was set at a maximum of 120,000 euros. Shown is the shoemaker’s daughter Helene Sedlmayr, a beauty celebrated in Bavarian court society in the 1830s.

It is the replica of a work commissioned by King Ludwig I for his Gallery of Beauties in the Munich Residence. The Edith-Haberland-Wagner-Foundation in Munich donated 237,500 euros for the portrait of this once much admired lady, whose frozen grace seems to us to be courtly idealized today.

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