S otheby's Modern & Contemporary Auction presents important paintings, sculpture and works on paper from the most renowned artists of the 20th and 21st centuries.
The sale is led by three dazzling canvases by Gerhard Richter. Offered in the year of the artist’s 90th birthday, they have never been seen on the market before. They are accompanied by an impressive and elegant early white nail relief by Günther Uecker from 1959, and a powerful work by Katharina Grosse, one of the most important living female German artists, its vivid colours applied using her unique technique: an industrial spray gun.
The auction also features a rare life-time cast of the beautiful Große Daphne by another extraordinary German female artist, Renée Sintenis, alongside a work by Berlin artist Lesser Ury, a pastel of Tiergartenstraße, Berlin, which recalls the Berlin art scene of the 1920s and 1930s.
The modern section is headed by Segelschiffe (Auf der Flensburger Förde), a luminous large-scale oil by Erich Heckel in which the artist demonstrates his passionate relationship with nature by way of his poetic expression of bright colours and a light-transmitting mood; and a superb painting by Heinrich Campendonk, Stillleben mit Papagei, a fine example of the artist’s typical society still lifes showing the artists most significant motifs: a parrot and playing carts.
The sale also includes exciting discoveries, such as works by the stand-out Ukrainian artist Bazil Duliskovich or the experimental Hungarian female artist Marta Kucsora, as well as stunning examples of an abstract diversity of form by Tamás Konok, András Wolsky and Zoltán Fábián.
Highlights of the sale will be on view from 30 March to 6 April and all works are available for examination upon request. We look forward to hearing from you with any questions and to welcoming you to the galleries at Palais Oppenheim in Cologne.
This season Sotheby’s is offering a wide selection of works on paper jewels from renowned international artists. Represented are celebrated German & Austrian artists such as Lyonel Feininger, Emil Nolde, Lesser Ury and Gustav Klimt to contemporaries like Thomas Schütte and Christo further into international emerging and record setting artists like Shara Hughes or Laura Owens.
Sotheby’s is excited having the honour to offer works from three important single owner collections. These works can be identified within the sale through their designated titles.
The Property from the Collection of the Late Manfred Wandel, Stiftung für konkrete Kunst, Reutlingen presents a beautiful selection of different works by some of the most celebrated artists of their field such Willi Baumeister, Günther Uecker, François Morellet and Bernhard Aubertin. This extraordinary collector focused his passion on works from the concrete art movement and assembled an extensive, deep and most fascinating internationally known collection of decades.
Despair, Desire and Delight: Works from an Outstanding Private Collection illustrated a group by famous German artist from Max Pechstein, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Ludwig Meidner as well as George Grosz and more. These works have been part of a private collection which has been masterfully compiled over many years with a captivating and very intimate thematic. Bringing together the exceptional craftsmanship and their confrontations with life of each artist by reflecting the variety of different emotional impressions and situations within their works.
Works from the Estate of Dr. Gerda und Dr. Manfred Liebermann, Hamburg, related to the renown painter Max Lieberman, found their fascination with art in the extraordinary works of the German artists Josef Scharl. Their personal relationship with the artist himself drew the collector’s couple into their collecting passion and got profoundly engaged with his workmanship and his encounters he expresses in his oeuvre.
Sotheby’s is honoured to offer a powerful installation work by Benjamin Langholz which is sold in support of the Burning Man Project: funds raised support participating artists, help ensure the nonprofit’s long-term survival, and fund their Arts and Civic Engagement programs.
In an artistic contradiction to this, the up and coming artist André Butzer immerses with his works into an artificial reality, his so-called Science Fiction-Expressionism, who is represented in the sale with a colourful canvas in his typical humorous and playful manner.
