Berlin auction house, Villa Grisebach, just finished its Fall cycle of seven sales in four days that totaled €21m for 1300 lots led by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff’s “Watt bei Ebbe” (1912) which made €2.7m.
Schmidt-Rottluff’s painting was acquired at Villa Grisebach in 1995. The consignor paid approximately €358,000 then and was offered for 1 to 1.5 million euros last week, a price increase that reflects the market strength for important examples of German Expressionism.
Another work seeing a steep increase was Gerhard Marcks’ sculpture “Weltangst” which was estimated at €80,000 but a private collector from north Germany paid €637,000, a world record price for a work by Gerhard Marcks. Other record prices came for a larger than life-size figure by Ossip Zadkine of 1920 (estimated at between €400-500k) which made €625,000. Isa Genzken’s sculpture “Wiese” (1990) brought €330,000 and went to a German private collection.
An early painting by Lyonel Feininger (“Der Junge Mann aus dem Dorfe,” estimate: EUR 500,000/700,000) sold for EUR 625,000 at the same price and estimate as the painting “Garten in Nordwijk” by Max Liebermann. Both paintings were bought by German collectors.
