A leopard skin becomes a magic carpet and floats high above South America with two figures. As if that weren't enough, a winged figure rides a four-legged friend. Maria Lassnig's painting “Wild Animals Are Endangered” offers an airy scenario in her typical color palette. The three by two meter oil painting was created in 1980 when the painter herself was about to take off. At that time Lassnig was invited to play in the Austria Pavilion at the Venice Biennale; she was also the first Austrian artist to receive a professorship. The large format, with an estimate of 600,000 to 800,000 euros, is now the highlight of the contemporary auction on June 23 at the Dorotheum in Vienna.

Georges Mathieu was one of the exponents of Informel, who impressed the young Lassnig during her Paris scholarship in the early 1950s. In his late work, Mathieu revived his gestural style from then. The 2.5 meter wide picture “Le temps a laissé son manteau” has an explosive effect (200,000 / 300,000), not least because of the alkyd resin used. The distinctive Warhol portrait of the gallery owner Dorothy Berenson Blau in front of a bright red background (350,000 / 450,000) as well as Günther Uecker's gridded nail square “Orange” (280,000 / 380,000) date from the early eighties. His “Diagonal Structure V” from 1974, on the other hand, relies on raw materiality (140,000 / 180,000). With acrylic in the primary colors, Imi Knoebel created his work "Ich nicht XI", which measures three by 3.7 meters;In the large picture created in 2006, he used the paper and aluminum backgrounds for variation (200,000 / 250,000). Heinz Mack dealt a lot with color saturation, which is also evidenced by his "Large Color Light" (100,000 / 150,000).

Little known, wrongly

In the 430 lots strong offer, there are again many Italian works, albeit less high-quality than usual. It starts with a square tapestry with colorful letters by Alighiero Boetti (260,000 / 360,000) from 1988.

"Il bello blu" was the title Piero Dorazio gave his portrait format in 1961, which shows a fabric-like pattern (120,000 / 160,000).

The wrongly little-known Carla Accardi created a wooden screen, which is painted on both sides with the symbols characteristic of the Sicilian (70,000 / 100,000).

A round picture by Alfons Schilling from 1962/88 provides a flourish from Austrian art: decades before Damien Hirst's “Spin Paintings” the artist sprayed a tondo (180,000 / 250,000) made to rotate by a motor; with its black overlaying everything, the picture is reminiscent of Arnulf Rainer. Rainer, Maria Lassnig's former companion, wrote the overpainting “Irma La Douce”, which Billy Wilder's comedy film probably inspired him to write in 1963 (40,000 / 70,000). Kurt Kocherscheidt's abstractions are also comparatively cheap, now the jade green oil painting “Chinese Middle I” (25,000 / 40,000).

The dance of classical modernism on June 22nd, fitting for the time of the pandemic, is led by a dance of death: Albin Egger-Lienz created his Memento-mori motif in many variations. The version now brought in from the United States will be auctioned fresh from the market; it should bring 500,000 to 800,000 euros. The march of farmers and bone man owes its fresco-like appearance to the pigment mixture with casein. In contrast, the sky blue and snow white in Alfons Waldes “Ascent of the Skiers” (320,000 / 500,000) are saturated and radiant. There is also a landscape from Egger-Lienz, a view of the Calvary in Bozen, which he made around 1922 look more like Morocco than South Tyrol from an empty terrace (130,000 / 240,000).

Werner Berg's “Sleepers in the Train”, which is reflected in the window with closed eyes (70,000 / 120,000), exudes a lot of atmosphere.

The oeuvre of Franz Sedlacek is somewhere between romanticism and new objectivity, including his “Refugee” (130,000 / 240,000), painted in 1928, who runs away at night.

Is the red shirt a political allusion?

The artist admired his colleague Alfred Kubin, of whom the small mixed technique "Strange Journey" makes a witch with a crow ride over the paper (70,000 / 100,000).

Klimt's pencil study from 1904/05 on the portrait of Margaret Stonborough-Wittgenstein (40,000 / 60,000) and Oskar Kokoschka's watercolor "Girls with Bare Feet" from 1992 (45,000 / 70,000) represent sensitive images of women on paper.

Still life with vinyl records

A small auction focus is on representatives of Czech modernism. For example with the Prague artist Jan Zrzavý, whose “Still Life with Three Apples” (150,000 / 200,000) and “Still Life with Two Vases” (130,000 / 180,000) both date from 1928, but follow different paths based on Cubism . The painter Emil Filla set the tone in the Prague scene; his “still life with records” follows French models (60,000 / 80,000). Another Eastern European artist is the Moscow painter Boris Dmitrievich Grigoriev, who decorated an artist's bar in Saint Petersburg from 1916. His painting “Russian Cabaret”, which is more than two meters high, places two revealingly dressed dancers or live-in ladies, framed by a red patterned curtain (200,000 / 300,000).

Two gems by Pierre-Auguste Renoir - the vegetable still life "Courgettes, tomates et aubergine" (80,000 / 100,000) and a girl study (40,000 / 60,000) - exude summery sensuality. The free play of colors and lines finally dominates in André Masson's oil painting “Formes de la Fécondité I” from 1955, which starts at 40,000 to 60,000 euros.