A private collection auctioned at Karl & Faber under the title “Paris Passion” shows how very good provenance and market freshness contribute to sales success.
In the 1970s and 1980s, an industrialist couple collected works from the French capital “in the middle of Munich”, according to managing director Rupert Keim, whose moderate estimates also increased international interest.
Renoir's "Étude de femmes...", sketched in oil, once in the collection of the art dealer Ambroise Vollard, went to America for the hammer price of 240,000 euros (estimate: 120,000 to 150,000 euros).
It was not only in this case that a private collector grabbed it: Picasso's gouache "Pierrot et Arlequin à la Terrasse d'un Café" from 1920, which was formerly owned by the dealer and collector Paul Rosenberg, came for 480,000 euros (250,000/350,000). , while Chagall's "Grande Corbeille de Fleurs" mixed media, purchased from Maeght in 1974, went to a French collector for 300,000 euros (200,000/250,000).
Fifteen bidders competed for Dalí's pen and ink drawing "Métamorphose de Narcisse" from 1937. The preparatory work for the painting of the same name previously belonged to the collector and Dalí patron Edward James;
here a former Munich dealer sold at 215,000 euros (60,000/80.
000) the last word in the hall.
Munch's woodcut “Two People.
The Lonely Ones” in a rare color variant for 300,000 euros (180,000/220,000) – this picture was not taken in Paris, an exception in the collection.
In terms of price, Gustave Moreau led the rest of the classic modern range, even if "La douleur d'Orphée" in watercolor and gouache underestimated the estimate at 400,000 euros.
On the other hand, Gustav Klimt's blue drawing of a "reclining semi-nude to the right" brought a double top estimate when a private bid from Norway approved 185,000 euros.
Signac’s canvas from 1884, illustrated on both sides with harbor scenes from the Île St. Louis, also reached a high price of 140,000 euros (60,000/80,000), and Jawlensky’s painting “Oliven, Mauer, Wind” (Olives, Wall, Wind), which was rejected in the Dorotheum in 2018 for 180,000 euros, rose to 200,000 euros.
A Hamburg collection consisting mainly of “violent painting and unrestricted sculpture” from the Eighties showed lace in suites by Georg Herold – one of his caviar pictures fetched more than four times the underestimate at 50,000 euros – and by Werner Büttner,
Katharina Grosse’s triptych of combinations of rectangles, which rose from around 40,000 to 66,000 euros, became highlights in the art chapter from 1945, and Francesco Vezzoli’s “Comizi di non Amore – The Prequel (Jeanne Moreau)” from 2004: felt like half of Italy was courting laser printing on canvas with teardrops of metal thread, until "a very good Milan private collection" was sold for 90,000 euros (15,000/20,000).
Lucio Fontana's green "Concetto spaziale 68 B 13" achieved the highest price on both auction days, which closed with a turnover of more than ten million euros, at 550,000 euros, just under estimate.