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Art collectors can be assumed to be passionate and at best also connoisseurship.

Or at least the hope that there will be passion and expertise in collecting, in exchanging ideas with other collectors, the artists and the art objects.

Karin von Maur is a proven connoisseur.

She is now transferring a large part of her collection to other hands and is therefore temporarily in the care of Christie's.

Organized by the branch in Amsterdam, the international auctioneer with headquarters in London is auctioning 145 works from the collection in an online auction.

The art historian Karin von Maur (born 1938) has made a name for herself as an expert on Southwest German art of the 20th century.

She is an expert on Oskar Schlemmer's work and has long headed the Schlemmer archive at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart.

As deputy director of the museum, she organized exhibitions with Pablo Picasso, Max Beckmann and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, but also themed shows on the magic of numbers or on composition in both the visual arts and music.

As a collector, Maur also advanced into the present day with works by Daniel Richter, Ben Willikens and Rebecca Horn.

Daniel Richter, untitled, 2005

Source: © Daniel Richter, VG Bild-Kunst Bonn 2021 / Christie's

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Many collectors share the annoying desire to decide on a work, even to have to decide.

That must have been easy for Maur, if one believes the characterizations of the collector in the catalog.

Dirk Boll, today President of Christie's for the Euro-Asian region, remembers von Maur as the “undisputed doyenne of classical modernism” from his time as a trainee lawyer in Stuttgart and later representative of the auction house in the capital of Baden-Württemberg.

She was a real opinion leader whose well-founded opinions and judgments were heard and respected by the art world. "

And Christoph Becker, director of the Kunsthaus Zürich, pays his former colleague respect for her humor.

She could also become polemical, especially when it comes to Schlemmer.

Karin von Maur wrote the authoritative catalog raisonné, which was no easy undertaking during the quarrels with the heirs over Schlemmer's estate.

Von Schlemmer can be found in the online auction “The Curator's Eye.

The Collection of Karin von Maur ”(until May 25, 2021), for example, is an early work on paper.

In the ink drawing “Standing (divided)” from around 1915/16, the “Triadic Ballet”, which he developed from 1922 as a professor of wall painting at the Bauhaus Weimar and which is owned by the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, can already be heard.

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The sheet has been in the possession of Karin von Maurs since 1976 and is now estimated at 10,000 to 15,000 euros.

Schlemmer's drawing “Ivo (Draft for a Sculpture)” from 1928 is at the same estimate. A lively figure sketch from 1923 should be added at least in the middle four-digit range.

Hannah Höch's photo montage "In the desert"

Source: © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021 / Christie's

As early as 1970 and directly from Hannah Höch, Karin von Maur acquired the watercolor photo collage “In the Desert” (1927–1929), an exemplary work from that time. The work shows a seemingly surrealistic landscape with strange creatures in front of a mountain of airship hulls. The picture was ennobled as a museum when it was shown in 2004 in the exhibition “Munch, Nolde, Beckmann ... Private Art Treasures from Southern Germany” at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart; commercially it is now valued at 40,000 to 60,000 euros.

Joseph Beuys, whose 100th birthday will be commemorated by many exhibitions this year, is now calling for unique objects and works on paper, including a box with the beautiful inscription "Joseph Beuys bruzzel-bruzzel brum-brum - economic value" from Edition Staeck (2000 to 3000 euros) or the gouache “North Pole” (20,000 to 30,000 euros) from the mid-1950s.

“Unexpected” is the name of Alighiero Boetti's drawing

Source: Alighiero Boettis / Christie's

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The main lot of the auction is a large-format ballpoint pen drawing by Alighiero Boetti, which is expected to bring in at least 70,000 euros.

Smaller embroidery pictures are estimated at 20,000 to 30,000 euros.

Dadamaino also belonged to the conceptual avant-garde of Italy.

A sheet of her series “L'alfabeto della mente lettera” inscribed on both sides is called for at an estimate of 3000 to 4000 euros.

Related and just as strict are the papers by Hanne Darboven from Hamburg, which are offered at similar prices.

Dirk Boll from Christie's was able to see Karin von Maur's collection as early as the 1990s when she visited her private home in Stuttgart.

This personal connoisseurship should have been useful when acquiring the works of art.