A "trumpet player in the village" – who is actually a tuba player – is by far the highest rating at Grisebach's summer auctions in Berlin: Lyonel Feininger's painting from the World War II 1915, dominated by almost shrill shades of yellow and green, shows a musician in the midst of other figures, whose slender limbs and bizarre movements are reminiscent of Feininger's time as a caricaturist. The painting, which has been exhibited many times, came from the artist's estate into the family's possession; now it is set at two to three million euros.
Classical Modernism also occupies the following top ranks of the evening auction "Selected Works". August Macke's 1913 painting of a man on a bench amid lush park vegetation is priced at 900,000 to 1.2 million euros, and Franz Marc's tempera of a "Blue Cow" grazing on a geometrically structured ground is expected to fetch 700,000 to 900,000 euros. "Sunspots" on the water in front of anchored fishing boats were painted by Max Pechstein in 1922 on a summer evening on the Pomeranian Baltic coast (estimate 400,000 to 600,000 euros). Theo van Doesburg's gouache "Étude pour une contre-composition" (60,000/80,000), on the other hand, stands for an abstract, Suprematist approach of the same period.
Max Beckmann, to whom Grisebach owes the German auction record of 20 million euros last year for his "Self-Portrait yellow-pink", was often drawn from exile in Amsterdam to the North Sea beaches. It was there that he was probably inspired to create the painting "Hammock" in 1942. The pictorial space is dominated by a woman bathing bare-breasted in the sun; behind her and an umbrella, one senses a man in a deck chair, who contributes to the monumental effect of the figures on the small picture format (300,000/400,000). Four decades earlier, Lovis Corinth painted "Mask in a White Dress". It is staged by his future wife Charlotte Berend, who leans towards the viewer laughing behind the black larva (250,000/350,000).
Filigree elegance reigns in the range of three-dimensional works thanks to Norbert Kricke's "Little Liège" from 1952 made of steel wire (40,000/60,000). The white "Pyramid" by conceptual artist Sol Lewitt, built from open cubes, is also devoid of heaviness (200,000/300,000). A series of twelve of Günther Förg's coveted lead paintings weigh heavily on this, each panel painted monochrome in a different colour, the whole estimated at 300,000 to 400,000 euros. As with Feininger, Sigmar Polke occasionally hints at wit and mockery: a man approaching a voluptuous lady in a fish costume and other quotations from cartoons and picture books populate a large work on paper from 1992 (120,000/ 180,000).
The auction house is unearthing a treasure from the 19th century with parts of the family estate of the artist brothers Erwin and Otto Speckter. Through their father, a co-founder of the first lithographic institute in Hamburg, the two came into contact with the work of Philipp Otto Ringer at an early stage, which is also reflected in their oeuvres: there are numerous sheets of the two personalities of North German Romanticism, small sketches as well as elaborate drafts. Erwin Speckter's Tondo "Faunal Family" is a preparatory work for the painting of the patrician villa Abendroth; Otto Speckter enchantingly painted three flying swallows in watercolour. These vivid testimonies of the "Hamburg School" are enriched by works by Carl Julius Milde, Hermann Kaufmann, Jakob Gensler and Louis Asher.
Significantly more than for these lots, which are usually valued in the lower four-digit range, there is a lot to invest in the main attractions of the Speckter Suite: "Lily of the Valley", "Tulip", "Nasturtium" and "Poppy", a total of 14 floral silhouettes cut by Philipp Otto Runge from white handmade paper, each cost estimates of 20,000 to 35,000 euros. Will the magnificent group be able to stay together? Wilhelm von Schadow, Jakob Philipp Hackert and Friedrich Olivier are other great draughtsmen. Adolph Menzel is not missing either, in 1844 he portrayed Sophiechen, the fourteen-year-old daughter of his friend Wilhelm Puhlmann, ladylike in an off-the-shoulder dress (15,000/20,000). For once, Daniel Chodwiecki does not appear as a graphic artist, but is the sitter in Anton Graff's oil portrait, smiling and holding his glasses in his hands. Graff also posed for the artist Mrs. Jeanne (100,000/150,000 for both paintings).
There is a large selection of romantic landscape studies, while pre-Impressionist plein air painting, led by Camille Corot's "Vachère de Ribagnac", shines under silvery willow trees (150,000/200,000). On June 1 and 2, Grisebach will be putting a total of 552 works of art up for auction in Berlin, the average estimated value of which is 19.9 million euros.