"Peanuts", one could say with the deceased former head of Deutsche Bank, Hilmar Kopper, whose collection is also affected, but it is still an annoying nibble for Van Ham, even if it is not about works worth millions: the Cologne one drew nine lots Auction House has withdrawn from the Modern section of its modern and contemporary art events scheduled for June 1st.

These are works attributed to the Russian avant-gardists Lyublov Popova, Vasily Yermilov, El Lissitzky, Aristarchus Lentulov and Ilya Chashnik.

Three more come from the Kopper collection, six more, including an oil painting with the attribution Lentulow, initially valued at 150,000 to 200,000, from the collection of the former Siemens supervisory board chairman Gerhard Cromme.

Ursula Scheer

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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The tip that the works could possibly be forgeries came from the police, Van Ham lets us know and cites the provenance of Kurt Benedict, Berlin, as a starting point.

Benedict was co-director of the Van Diemen Gallery, which hosted the influential "First Russian Art Exhibition" in 1922.

The later reference to Benedict with regard to Russian avant-gardists was questioned decades ago in this newspaper, again in 2017 in the "Zeit".

"This provenance was not previously known to Van Ham," says the auction house, referring to the lack of time: the withdrawn works were submitted "a few days" before the catalog went to print.

"In summary, we have to state that none of the works should have been included in the catalog without the completion of the research and scientific investigations," it says now.

The works would be entered into the Critical Works database, and the objects in question from the Kopper Collection would be handed over to researchers – who is not yet clear – for analysis.

Among the remaining 109 lots in the Modern auction, Lovis Corinth's sumptuous 1913 still life of red and pink roses in a vase is likely to draw a lot of attention.

It was recently restituted by the Royal Museums in Brussels to the heirs of its Jewish previous owners, the Frankfurt couple Gustav and Emma Mayer.

It is now estimated at 250,000 to 300,000 euros.

From the Hilmar Kopper Collection comes one of four lifetime casts in bronze of a “Javanisches Tanzerin” by Georg Kolbe (estimate 200,000 to 300,000 euros).

Another copy of the figure sold for 520,000 euros at Ketterer in Munich last year.

In the "Post War" section, Gerhard Richter's "6.2.88" (180,000/300,000) stands out, in "Contemporary" a "head" in oil on canvas (80,000/120,000) created in 2004 by Marwan, who died in 2016,

The insolvency auction of the late Berlin gallery owner Michael Schultz brings together 37 lots, including paintings by Cornelia Slime and a finely drawn collage by the Korean artist SEO: “Untitled” from 2001 is expected to fetch 30,000 to 50,000 euros.

A charity auction for the Ukraine rounds off the events on June 1st, before the auctions from the Thomas Olbricht Collection continue in a daily auction on June 9th: with three hundred items of contemporary art.