Modern Art - Gangsters

The eminent total of 15 six-figure works is led by French and German classics, with some of the artists represented by two or more works. Emil Nolde is present with four works (up to € 300/350,000), Lovis Corinth with three paintings (up to € 250/300,000) and Arshile Gorky with two works on paper (up to € 200/300,000). From Pierre Auguste Renoir we have a canvas (€ 180/250,000) and from George Grosz a highly important sheet from the 1920s, the artist’s best creative phase (€ 250/300,000). There is a canvas each from Ernst Wilhelm Nay (€ 200,000) and Lyonel Feininger (€ 150/180,000) as also from Hermann Max Pechstein (€ 140/160,000). A super sheet from 1913 by August Macke is offered (€ 80/120,000), whilst a work by Karl Hofer is estimated at € 100/150.000 and a large sculpture by Karl Hartung at € 120/170.000.

The brush, ink and watercolour on paper sheet ‘Ganoven an der Theke’ painted in 1922 by George Grosz stands at the top of the auction. Exhibited, amongst other places, at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, this paper work belongs without doubt to the most important sheets from the artist’s best creative period, whose depictions of social life of around 1920 are icons of modernity (lot 26, € 250/300,000).

The most significant works are from Emil Nolde, with the canvas ‘Der Jäger’ from 1918 at the pinnacle. Nolde turned the painting over to be sold and, according to a letter by the artist, in April of 1922 it was in Frankfurt with the gallerist Ludwig Schames, one of the most important art dealers for Expressionism at that time and presumably shortly thereafter became the property of the Frankfurt architect Paul Paravicini (lot 33, € 300/350,000). In 1946, the artist painted the fantastic watercolour ‘Abendmeer mit Segelboot und Dampfer’. Coming direct from the artist, the sheet has an estimate of € 120/150,000 (lot 4). Two further watercolours, ‘Marschlandschaft mit Abendwolken’ from around 1925/1930 and ‘Dschunken auf dem gelben Fluss’ – created in November 1913 on Nolde’s South See trip during his stay in China – are each valued at €60/80,000 (lots 65 and 3).

Three canvases by Lovis Corinth are offered for sale: The magnificent ‘Römische Blumen’ from 1914 (lot 19, € 250/300,000), ‘Baccantenzug’ from 18 years previously (lot 27, € 200/300,000), and ‘Selbstporträt als Nürnberger Landssknecht’ from 1913 (lot 28, € 100,000). Two drawings by Arshile Gorky impressively show that despite the largely spontaneous and unplanned drawing action, the artist’s deeply personal works are of balanced compositional beauty and contain both dramatic and lyrical elements (lot 10, € 200/300,000 and lot 9, € 80/100,000). In Pierre-Auguste Remoir’s small, delicately coloured painting ‘Nu debout en pied’ from 1879, the female figure of Venus is depicted appearing out of the dark background. Formerly of the collection of Henri Fantin-Latour, the pictured has an estimate of € 180/220,000 (lot 41).

Painted in 1951, when Ernst Wilhelm Nay relocated to Cologne from the rural idyll of his Hofheim studio, 'Die Grüne Flucht' captivates the viewer with a newly acquired dynamism. The canvas is valued at € 200,000 (lot 17). Lyonel Feininger’s painting ‘An der Seine’ from 1912 was housed as a long-term-loan for an extended period in the Kunstmuseum Moritzburg in Halle (Saale), where it was the subject of extensive art historical and technical analyses reconstructing the history of the work’s creation. The painting’s appearance today presents a version that was heavily reworked by the artist over a number of years: a photograph from the 1910s/20s provides insight into its original state. As an extraordinary record of Feininger’s stylistic and technical development, this represents a central and key work that possessed very special personal significance for the painter himself and depicts the defining turning point in his unique artistic career (lot 52, € 150/180,000).

Karl Hartungs’s 223 cm long ‘Große Liegende’ of 1951 is among the artist’s most important works, created in the prime of his artistic development. Karl Hartung had been pursuing the motif of reclining nudes since the 1920s – initially inspired by Maillol, he worked in an increasingly abstract manner as the years progressed. In the 1940s, a period in which Hartung found himself in a veritable frenzy of creativity, he developed - also inspired by Henry Moore - a large series of nudes in which he experimented with an extreme variety of formal means of expression (lot 7, € 150/170,000). Max Pechstein created the enormously colourful portrait of a ‘Bäuerin aus Nidden’ during his first stay on the Curonian Spit in 1909. Pechstein’s works of that summer exhibit an entirely distinctive aesthetic, intensity and tonality. It was particularly in blue and green that the painter found what he refers to in a letter to Erich Heckel as the “Curian colours” – which would shape his work in a great variety of ways (lot 62, € 140/160,000).

From the two canvases by Karl Hofer, ‘Mädchen am Fenster’ from 1942 stands out with an estimate of € 100/150,000 (lot 31). August Macke’s Indian ink and pen and ink drawing ‘Auf der Promenade’ from 1913 is from the collection of Dr Til Macke. Exhibited many times, the drawing is one of the top works of his late graphic period (lot 32, € 80/120,000). Further works of importance include Odilon Redon’s picture ‘Figure en rouge assise sur un roche’ in oil on card (lot 40, € 60/80,000) and Picasso’s colour lino cut ‘Portrait de femme à la fraise et au chapeau’ from the year 1962 (lot 45, € 80/90,000).

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at 0221/92 57 29–30.

Edgar Abs
Press and public relations
Cologne, May 2022