Grisebach auctioned the impressive portrait from 1943 on Thursday evening for 23.2 million euros. This makes it the most expensive work of art ever sold in Germany.
(Photo: Noshe)
Dusseldorf On Thursday evening the hammer fell in the Grisebach auction at 20 million euros. With the buyer’s premium, the anonymous buyer approved 23.2 million euros for Max Beckmann’s (1884-1950) “Self-portrait yellow-pink”. The German Expressionist painted it in exile in Amsterdam in 1943.
The purchase price is a sensation that will go down in the annals of the art market. The estimated price was between 20 and 30 million euros. The level-headed auctioneer Markus Krause had to encourage three bidders over the phone to bid higher and higher. Anyone who wanted to keep up with the million steps had previously provided bank information. Bidders came from London, the USA and Switzerland. The latter was awarded the contract.
With a gross price of 23.2 million euros, the vertical self-portrait in yellow and pink is approaching the most expensive self-portrait to date. Industrialist and museum founder Ronald Lauder bought the “Self-Portrait with Horn” at Sotheby’s in May 2001 for $22.6 million. The absolute price peak is the “Hell of the Birds” from 1937/1938. In 2017 Christie’s auctioned it off for 36 million pounds or the equivalent of 46 million dollars to gallery owner Larry Gagosian and his client, collector and financial investor Leon Black.
A double-digit million surcharge has never been recorded in Germany before. Until now, sellers used to deliver rare works of the highest quality in New York or London.
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That seems to be changing. For Grisebach, the relationships that have developed with the consignor family have paid off. The Handelsblatt had revealed that the family of a Bremen business lawyer who died in Switzerland in 2006 had given it up for auction in Berlin.
In 1996, the Bremen Modernist collector acquired the canvas painting for the reported price of five million Deutschmarks in an exhibition at the Pels-Leusden Gallery in Berlin. Pels-Leusden was and is closely linked to the Grisebach auction house via the Grisebach initiator and co-founder Bernd Schultz.
Dangerous Exile
With a shadowed face and folded arms, the painter describes himself “like a Buddhist monk”. The art historian Eugen Blume writes in the catalogue. The meditative arm position and the bright colors are to be understood as a longing for inner peace in an extremely insecure situation in exile. After the Germans invaded Holland, the ostracized painter was banned from exhibiting and had to hide his paintings.
The leading German Expressionist emigrated from exile in Amsterdam to the USA in 1947, where he died in 1950. Max Beckmann had and still has a passionate fan base here. So it is not surprising that the main work of the Grisebach offer in 2022 was only exhibited in New York and Berlin for preview.
The striking self-portrait that was auctioned off this Thursday is one of many paintings by Max Beckmann that were brokered by Grisebach. So far, the portrait format “Female Head in Blue and Gray (Die Ägypterin)” has held the record as the most expensive work of art ever auctioned in Germany. On May 31, 2018, Grisebach was able to sell it to a Swiss private collection for three times the average estimate for 5.5 million euros gross.
As early as 2018, the Grisebach auction house was able to sell a Beckmann painting for the then record price of 5.5 million euros.
(Photo: Grisebach)
A collector from Switzerland has now put the “Egyptian” in second place among the most valuable paintings auctioned in Germany. With his investment of 23.2 million euros, the unnamed bidder also underlines the rank of the German expressionist Max Beckmann.
More: Christie’s takes in more than two billion dollars in New York