Sotheby's Christine Senft On Highlights from Cologne's Modern & Contemporary Auctions

Launch Slideshow

Sotheby's Christine Senft On Highlights from Cologne's Modern & Contemporary Auctions

  • Gotthard Graubner Camelionid (1999/2000)
    "Gotthard Graubner’s Camelionid is a highlight from the Ingvild Goetz Collection and is being sold to benefit social and cultural projects. Camelionid is a particularly vibrant example of Graubner's Farbraumkörper (Colour Space Bodies) and demonstrates his ability to allow for pure colour to appear immaterial, for it to become the medium of the artwork itself, exuding a meditative atmosphere.

    Gotthard Graubner deals with the effects of colour like hardly any other German artist. The series of Farbraumkörper give colour a plasticity that enables a dialogue between surface and object and the room. Whilst at first appearing monochromatic, Graubner’s paintings seem to unfold under the gaze of the viewer, revealing a mottled whirlwind of iridescent hues."
    View Lot View Auction
    Share
  • Gerhard Richter Grün-Blau-Rot 789-33
    "Grün-Blau-Rot 789-33 is an exceptionally vibrant example, almost perfectly balanced in colour, by Germany’s most famous living artist Gerhard Richter. Executed in 1993, in collaboration with the Swiss art magazine Parkett, it is part of a series of 115 unique works.

    From the late 1970s to the late 1980s, Richter created his abstract paintings almost exclusively by using a squeegee. This method resulted in an unpredictable application of paint, as well as affecting the paint's behavior. In Richter’s work, the painting sets the parameters of its own reality."
    View Lot View Auction
    Share
  • Lesser Ury Hyde Park (1926)
    "Hyde Park from 1926, comes to Cologne from an American Private Collection, having been passed down through generations. It perfectly captures the essence of London’s iconic Hyde Park, still one of the city’s most beloved green spaces. It is a beautiful example of Lesser Ury’s ability to depict a certain moment in time, by displaying the interplay of light and colour.

    The painting features park-strollers and spectators of a horse race, embedded in a vivid colour palette and varying textures. Ury’s confident use of light and shadow is especially striking in the present work. He employed the plein air technique to perfection, which captures the play of light through his distinct brushstrokes and gives the painting a sense of spontaneity and intimacy."
    View Lot View Auction
    Share
  • Jonathan Meese Der Eiserne Mönch im Geheimland (The Iron Monk in Secret Land) (2005)
    "Viewed as one of the most provocative figures in Germany's contemporary art scene, Jonathan Meese’s work is at once humorous and cryptic, illustrating a blend of historical, science fiction and legendary references. Der Eiserne Mönch im Geheimland depicts a portrait of Jörg Immendorff, in which Meese offers a unique interpretation of the artist, evoking the spirit of Immendorff's work.

    Expressive brushstrokes in vibrant red outline a large, omnipresent head, symbolising Immendorff's reputation as a confident and passionate personality. The portrait was painted two years before Immendorff's death. By then, the artist was already suffering from ALS, a neurological disease that left him unable to paint with his left hand. Meese's work is an honest and touching tribute to the enduring influence of the painter's work. The artist captures the essence of Immendorff's art while interpreting it in his own personal style."
    View Lot View Auction
    Share
  • Günter Brus Erinnerungen an die Menschheit (Memories of Humanity) (1985)
    "Günter Brus is one of the most important protagonists of the Wiener Aktivisten (Viennese Actionists), the Austrian art movement from the 1960s. Its members, including also Hermann Nitsch, took up the concept of the American 'Happening' and elements of Fluxus art, and implemented it in a provocative way.

    The present work was a gift by Günther Brus to Gerhard Roth and announces in the title the joint work on the play Erinnerungen an die Menschheit, which premiered on the 27th September 1985 at the Schauspielhaus Graz. The depiction itself, however, is not connected to the cosmos which Brus developed for Roth’s play, but refers in terms of its content and expression, to his oeuvre of drawings from the first half of the 1980s and can be compared to works such as Man, the Zeroth Sign of the Zodiac (1983) or The Administrator of the Phantom Palace (1984)"
    View Lot View Auction
    Share
/
Close