New York’s Shapiro Auctions did well last week with several works of Soviet art and Russian icons. The sale totaled $2.5m. But the house also did quite well with these works:
German Symbolist/Art Nouveau painter Franz Von Stuck’s Salome, 1920, sold for $173,000.
Austrian- Hungarian genre painter Isidor Kaufmann’s Portrait of a Hasidic Jew (Lot 507) sold for $161,000.
von Stuck is also the featured work in Sotheby’s 19th Century sale later this week with an estimate of $800,000-1m. The presence of the 19th Century sale days after the Impressionist and Modern sale is a testimony to the growing values and crossover interest in 19th Century art that does not fit into the Modernist tradition. Here’s Sotheby’s on their von Stuck:
Franz von Stuck’s Die Sünde promptly drew large crowds when first exhibited at the premiere exhibition of the Munich Secession in 1893 and maintains its popularity today as an icon of the Symbolist art movement. First conceived in 1889, Stuck’s striking interpretation presents Eve emerging naked out of a darkness, the body of the massive snake coiled around her, and a light or flame in the upper right. One of twelve known versions, each work slightly differs in its composition, many of which are in public collections such as the Neue Pinakothek in Munich, the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the Galleria di arte Moderna in Palermo, the Frye Museum in Seattle, and the artist’s studio at the Villa Stuck in Munich.
