Bavaria to receive an exceptional highlight
Ketterer is building a new home for art at the Munich trade fair
The pistol has already been fired at the starting line. Construction work on one of the largest art-related undertakings in recent years has begun. Only a stone’s throw from the Munich trade fair ground, Ketterer Kunst Munich is building a multi-functional art centre with underground parking facilities.
"For at least twenty years I’ve been travelling all over the world and have attended innumerable art events. From that kaleidoscope of impressions, my own best-of concept has developed, that is now to assume form. Art lovers will in future find everything from Albrecht Dürer to Andy Warhol under one roof. Put differently, buy art or simply enjoy it, as you like it," thus Robert Ketterer, owner of Ketterer Kunst, who is about to build this temple to art.
Covering some 3500 square metres (11 483 square ft) of ground, a three-storeyed building is to go up, featuring an ultramodern auction room, generous exhibition space, a lounge with a readers’ corner, a café with international ambience and what will probably be the world’s biggest art display window. Franz + Sacher, a Munich engineering firm, is responsible for building it while the award-winning designer duo "The Walking House" will fit out the whole with a sophisticated customised lighting concept.
And more than a thought has been spared for the younger generation: so that adults can enjoy the atmosphere in peace and quiet, a daycare centre staffed by personnel trained in art education will give children glimpses of the fascination that is art in a play context. The children of our employees will also benefit from this facility.
The factors that tipped the scale towards the momentous decision to move our headquarters, which have actually been operating to full capacity as far as space and display are concerned, have been - apart from the optimal transport links guaranteeing accessibility and the cosmopolitan environment - our steadily growing internet activities. After all, Ketterer Kunst counts on being Europe’s biggest online auction house by 2010.
Hermann Max Pechstein: Role Models and Developments
With an international reputation as one of the most important Expressionists, Hermann Max Pechstein (1881-1955) eschewed the pronounced distortions characteristic of that movement but laid all the more emphasis on the glowing Expressionist palette. Pechstein has always been perceived as one of the most talented painters in the group of artists who called themselves "Die Brücke". Within only a few years’ time, he also became a favourite with the press. However - like so many of his colleagues - Pechstein had to go through quite a long orientation phase before he was in a position to celebrate his first successes.
His first great role model was Vincent van Gogh, whose influence on the work Pechstein produced in 1906 and 1907 is palpable. Pechstein was in Paris in 1908, where he discovered the painting of Henri Matisse and the Fauves. The years 1909 and 1910 mark a first high point in Pechstein’s painting: he developed an Expressionism that was distinctively independent in style and more harmonious than that of his "Die Brücke" colleagues.
Pechstein’s work is notable for a lightness that is unusual in German art. After all, in the 1920s and early 1930s, the painter spent a great deal of time in Switzerland, Italy and southern France, where his style changed once more and this time for good: contours were emphasised, the palette became quieter and more harmonious. This was a phase that saw Pechstein producing outstanding portraits and figurative paintings.
Anyone who would like to see a selection of Pechstein’s works has a good opportunity to do so at the Buchheim Museum. There paintings by Hermann Max Pechstein are being shown alongside works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. If you want to do more than just look, in fact, if you’d like to own a Pechstein yourself, you can bid at the Ketterer Kunst inaugural auction in the new House for Art, where the 1932 Pechstein oil painting "Nach der Heimkehr" ["On Returning Home"] will go under the hammer. The estimate ranges between € 250 000-350 000.
Always something different - Rembrandt and his versatile talent
He was a genius on a quest: Rembrandt van Rijn (1606 - 1669) - seeking success on the art market as well as astonishing new pictorial inventions and appropriate forms. With an œuvre comprising over 300 paintings, 300 etchings and some 1000 drawings, the prolific Dutch artist is viewed as the most important painter of the 17th century.
What is so special about Rembrandt: he did not always strive for precise rendering. In his paintings, he surpassed all predecessors in his brilliant handling of light and shade. By playing on contrasts of light and shade, Rembrandt succeeded in directing the viewer’s eye exactly to the crucial statement he was making in a work. And the persons portrayed in his pictures look almost as if they were alive, as if they are actually moving.
In addition, Rembrandt was intensively preoccupied with etching throughout his career, both during his early years as an artist and at the height of his career as a successful painter in Amsterdam. Even four centuries after his death, the value of his work continues to appreciate - within the past decade alone up to 50 per cent. Some Rembrandts, including the etching "View of Amsterdam" (ca 1640), which carries an estimate of € 40,000-50,000, are to go under the hammer at the Ketterer Kunst auction in Hamburg on 25 October 2008
From apothecary to artist: Spitzweg’s exciting career
The Munich painter Carl Spitzweg (1808-1885) was a master of genre painting, featuring scenes drawn from everyday life. His pictures are humorous and friendly yet tongue-in-cheek. They depict oddballs, naïve beauties in poetically cosy little rooms and gardens, the small acts of everyday living - always against the background of solidly middle-class houses and small country towns with twisted alleys but also idyllic natural settings.
Carl Spitzweg’s artistic career began when he started doing surreptitious caricatures of his apothecary clientele. Illness eventually forced him to devote himself entirely to painting. The artist, the bicentenary of whose birth was celebrated in February 2008, is today as popular as ever for his eccentric creations such as “The Poor Poet”, “The Cactus Collector” and “The Lepidopterist”.
Spitzweg’s œuvre comprises more than 1500 works, including numerous oil paintings. He did not detach himself from the idyllic representationality of Biedermeier until late in his career, when he began to paint in a freer - impressionist - style. An interesting fact: his “The Poor Poet”, dating from 1839, was “savaged” by critics. From then on, Spitzweg did not sign his works with his full name, using instead a monogram in the form of a rhombus.
Several Spitzwegs, notably two oil paintings: “Lagernde Karrner” [“Gypsies Resting”] (estimate: € 35 000-45 000) and “Schwabenmädel am Gartenzaun” [“Swabian Girl at the Garden Fence”] (estimate: € 30 000-35 000), are to go under the hammer at the Ketterer Kunst auction in Hamburg on 25 October 2008.
"Outlawed Art": Silesian museum shows works by Schmidt-Rottluff
A first for an extraordinary series of pictures by this co-founder of the group of artists who called themselves "Die Brücke": The Schlesisches Museum in Görlitz is showing works of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff’s (1884-1976) from the Kreisau estate, the centre of one of the most important resistance movements against the National Socialist dictatorship.
The resistance hero Helmuth James von Moltke (1907-1945) had invited the Expressionist artist, who by then was proscribed as "decadent", to his estate in Lower Silesia. As Moltke already feared that Silesia would be lost, he invited Schmidt-Rottluff to his home to paint unique pictures so that the family would always be able to keep their memories of Kreisau alive. Since 1941, Schmidt-Rottluff had been forbidden to engage in any art-related activities.
The special show of "Outlawed Art" ["Verbotene Kunst"] will run in Görlitz until 21 September 2008. By the way, just recently at the latest Ketterer Kunst auction on 4 June 2008, a watercolour by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff set a world record: "Girl with a Blue Scarf" was sold for € 360 000 *, making it the most expensive work on paper by this artist worldwide.
* The sale price equals the hammer price + 18 per cent surcharge.
From Degas to Baselitz: Sculpture and Painting in Baden-Baden
"Sculpture is the best commentary a painter can make on his painting," Pablo Picasso once remarked. Viewed from that angle, there is a lot to take in currently in Baden-Baden. The work of 20 celebrated artists of the 20th and 21st centuries is being presented at the Museum Frieder Burda.
The painters are not just represented by paintings but also by a selection of their sculpture. Under the heading "Sculpture by Painters - Painting and Sculpture in Dialogue", 140 works will be on view until 26 October. The Degas cabinet is a high point. Here stands the bronze "Small Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer" (1878-1881), who poses on a round pedestal as if dancing on a table. Also shown is the rarely exhibited Degas painting "Rehearsal in the Foyer de la danse" from the Phillips Collection, Washington.
Women were his inspiration, his schooling. Modigliani engaged thoroughly in "studies from life" and also had numerous affairs. He was extremely popular with young ladies and had no qualms at all about returning the favour by making their bodies look more beautiful when he painted them. Among all the many entangled affairs he conducted there were two, after all, that led to longer-term relationships: his acquaintanceship with the journalist Beatrice Hastings and his relationship with Jeanne Hébuterne, whom he later married. He did at least twenty portraits of Jeanne.
In addtion, the exhibition features works by Paul Gauguin, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani and many other celebrated artists.
Amedeo Modigliani’s (1884-1920) fate resembled that of so many other artists: during his lifetime, only a very few people recognised the importance of his work. However, soon after his death, art dealers sensed their profit potential and began snapping up everything he had left that they could find.
Today his female models are especially esteemed. For all the abstraction and simplification Modigliani engaged in, he nevertheless succeeded in expressing his sitters’ personalities - sometimes in the deft way he captured their body language. He also tended to portray the same model in entirely different ways, depending on his or her mood or the times they had had together: sometimes self-assured, at others fragile.
Women were his inspiration, his schooling. Modigliani engaged thoroughly in "studies from life" and also had numerous affairs. He was extremely popular with young ladies and had no qualms at all about returning the favour by making their bodies look more beautiful when he painted them. Among all the many entangled affairs he conducted there were two, after all, that led to longer-term relationships: his acquaintanceship with the journalist Beatrice Hastings and his relationship with Jeanne Hébuterne, whom he later married. He did at least twenty portraits of Jeanne.
Current sales figures reveal how well Modigliani’s inimitable style is doing now: at the most recent Ketterer Kunst auction in Munich alone, a Modigliani "Caryatid" realised € 425 000. A painting of his wife Jeanne achieved a staggering 30.1 million dollars at an international auction.
Enrico Castellani structures art
Italy in the 1950s and 1960s: anyone who wanted to get somewhere then had to create an aesthetic position of his own - if he didn’t want to putter along in the wake of traditionalism. Lucio Fontana and Piero Manzoni represented two internationally acclaimed luminaries at once going an avant-garde way that was diametrically opposed to it. That also encouraged the young Enrico Castellani to differentiate himself from conventional approaches.
He created textured canvases, working them over with a sewing-machine, for instance, thus giving his surfaces a relief-like structure. In 1959 Castellani joined forces with fellow artist Manzoni to open Galleria Azimut in Milan. In their work, the Azimut artists pursued the aim of producing art that was not intended to be imitative but rather to possess reality and authenticity in its own right. Light, shade, space and structure, therefore, constituted the picture itself.
During the first half of the 1960s, Castellani showed work at the major exhibitions mounted by the group of artists known as ZERO. And at that time, in 1965, he produced a work that made history as "superficie trapunte". The "quilted surface" is a silver-coloured canvas. In a regular and harmonious arrangement, little bumps protrude into the canvas from the back without piercing the surface. Castellani had thus found his place alongside Fontana and Manzoni - and has remained very successful with it to the present day.
Should you wish to acquire one of Enrico Castellani’s extraordinary works of art, your chances of doing so now look good. "Superficie bianca" ["Blank/White Surface"], a work in acrylic on a modulated canvas, is to go under the hammer at Ketterer Kunst on 5 June carrying an estimate of € 80,000-120,000.
Niki de Saint Phalle: Form is what matters
Her voluminous, colourful "Nana" figures made Niki de Saint Phalle world-famous. At her first public show in 1968, the French artist caused a great sensation - but she was ridiculed by her fellow artists.
Today both art historians and the public at large acclaim these figures as an expression of "femaleness" that is in touch with our time. "Nana Power" was what Niki de Saint Phalle called her first exhibition featuring "Nanas". They were supposed to symbolise female nature as cheerful and emancipated. Twenty years on, however, her view of the "Nanas" had changed. By then, Niki de Saint Phalle even saw her figures as heralding a new matriarchal epoch.
The empowered female artist ultimately triumphed over all the sceptics with her art. Apart from the "Nanas", Niki de Saint Phalle created numerous other works of sculpture, which today are honoured not just at countless group and solo shows across the world. On the international art market, the life-affirming works of Niki de Saint Phalle are among the hottest tips in contemporary art.
Two years before she died on 21 May 2002, Niki de Saint Phalle was awarded the Praemium Imperiale, the "Arts Nobel Prize", for her lifetime work by the Japan Art Association. This honour made the value of the individual works skyrocket once more.
Sped by such a strong tail wind, investors will feel that this is just the right time for adding a Niki de Saint Phalle figure to their portfolios. Three Niki de Saint Phalles are to go under the hammer at the Ketterer Kunst auction in Munich on 4 and 5 June: alongside the 1983 group of sculpture "Les Baigneurs" (estimate: € 30,000-40,000), there are also two delightful little dragons (estimates: € 30,000-40,000 and € 55,000-65,000).
Jonathan Meese: "Art is self-creating"
Jonathan Meese (38) is a master of hool art. The Hamburg artist paints and models explosively colourful and louche figures, gives abstruse readings and directs pieces for the stage that are, to put it mildly, unusual. He is the enfant terrible of the art world and the media can’t get enough of him. A lot of attention and resounding success for a young artist, whose talent consists not least in banishing all certainties about his work.
To take one example: he celebrates the holy trinity of pathos, pose and parody so brazenly that even hardened art critics are left speechless when confronted with his paintings, installations and sculpture. Honestly felt admiration blends with barely suppressed amusement, all according to his creed: art is self-creating. He constantly refers to humour in his work, to the bright side of horror.
One of the best known installations Meese set up in the Berlin Post Transport Office under the auspices of the 1998 Biennale consisted of hundreds of seemingly arbitrarily accumulated pictures of movie stars - and of innumerable photos of the artist himself. He has retained the principle of relating himself to such celebrities and new figures continue to surface in his works. The gamut ranges from obscurantists through politicians to global movers and shakers.
If you simply can’t wait till the next exhibition showing work by Jonathan Meese, you can take a work of his home with you from the forthcoming Ketterer Kunst auctions. A livre d’artist as well as three other works by Meese are to go under the hammer at the Hamburg Rare Books auction on 19/20 May. Estimates range from € 800 to € 2500. However, you’ll have to dig deeper into your pockets than that at the Munich Modern Art & Post War auction on 4/5 June to come away with Jonathan Meese’s "Dr. Lilithyr (General Tanz Sautanz, s.v.p.)". This large-scale work in mixed technique and collage on canvas done in 2005 carries an estimate of € 55,000-65,000.
Works by Immendorff: a good investment
The trend is consistent: when a distinguished artist dies, his work appreciates in value. This process set in while Jörg Immendorff was still alive, a development which many art collectors and aficionados viewed as an opportunity to acquire one of those highly prized objects or pictures in time before they appreciated too much. An intelligent decision, considering that the works of the Düsseldorf painter have been rocketing since he died last May.
No sooner had Immendorff had been buried than the offers for his pictures on Ebay started to explode. Back in 2006, the internationally oriented "Capital Kunstkompass" noted his ranking had ascended from 42nd place to 13th on the list of the most important contemporary artists. That still leaves him behind such top-ranking German artists as Gerhard Richter and Georg Baselitz yet the experts are sure about one thing: this will not cause Immendorff to appreciate any less rapidly.
The early work from the 1960s and 1970s (e.g. Café Deutschland) is particularly in demand - and the supply of it is, by contrast, quite small. However, the late works also meet with a lively response on the market.
Even though prices for his work are going up, Immendorff is still affordable. Anyone who would like to have the genuine article hanging on their living-room walls can take part, for instance, in the Ketterer Kunst auction that is to be held in Hamburg on 5 April 2008. Pictures and bronzes by the master are to go under the hammer carrying estimates as low as € 1400. So come along and bid.
Art boom puts pressure on museums
The art market boom is putting increasing pressure on museums in Germany. The reason: works by eminent artists are fetching record prices at auctions worldwide. As a result, the cost of transport and insurance premiums when paintings and works of sculpture are sent on tour to exhibitions is also soaring.
To take one example: the insurance premiums alone paid for the Mark Rothko retrospective (115 exhibits) are estimated to amount to about a billion euros. The Rothko paintings were on view until recently at the Hypo-Kunsthalle in Munich and will be at the Hamburg Kunsthalle from 16 May to 24 August. A year ago, a Mark Rothko was sold at auction for $72 800 000, which put it on the list of the world’s ten most expensive paintings. The reaction: donors promptly withdrew some of the paintings promised to the Rothko retrospective.
Moreover, museums are also faced with logistical problems. After all, the more valuable a work, the higher the transport costs. To keep damages in the case of accidents or theft within feasible limits, particularly valuable works destined along with others for exhibition must be transported in separate vehicles.
Experts also explain the art-market buoyancy by comparing it with the current stock-market turbulence: whereas the financial crisis is causing some stocks to plummet, many well-heeled punters view art as a safe investment. The annual volume of insurance premiums paid for art treasures in private collections in Germany amounts to some 40 to 50 million euros.
Study: Art market turnover almost doubled in five years
Turnover on the international art market has nearly doubled in five years (to 2006). According to a study, art works worth a total of 43.3 billion euros changed hands worldwide in the record-breaking year 2006. That is one result of a study commissioned by the European Art and Antiques Fair (TEFAF) in Maastricht.
Accounting for five per cent of overall sales proceeds, China has advanced to fourth place on the global art market, which is still significantly dominated by the US (46 per cent) and the United Kingdom (27 per cent). Germany is responsible for three per cent of global art turnover. The market trend: still climbing.
The Impressionist Bag of Tricks
None of the great Impressionists could have had any idea of what art historians would later make of their pictures. In recent years, their works have been subjected to infrared spectroscopy, X-rayed, enlarged many times, chemically analysed and dissected. Thus secrets have come to light that many a master might well have preferred to have kept to himself: that he first drew in everything in pencil, that his first ten designs were not to his liking or that he painted on cheap cigar-boxes.
In an unusual exhibition, the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne is now presenting the results of such studies, granting visitors a glimpse into artists’ bag of tricks. The one hundred and thirty exhibits include masterpieces by Renoir, Gauguin, Monet, van Gogh and Signac. Many a picture has yielded up its history under the infrared eye.
In each case, a good many surprises lurked beneath the layers of paint. To take one example: everything happened spontaneously - a persistent myth associated with Impressionism. However, the motifs were often very carefully planned. Vincent van Gogh plotted out one of his best-known paintings, "The Bridge at Arles", on a grid of lines. In a letter to his brother Theo, he explained this aid to composition: when he was working outdoors, he carried a wooden perspective frame along with him, which corresponded exactly to the raster he would draw on his canvas before painting. When he had found a motif, he set up the frame in front of it and looked through it; the framed field of vision that would be the picture-field would already be subdivided into different fields. That made it easier for him to transfer it to the canvas on the correct scale and in proportion.
Nevertheless, most people ultimately do not care whether paintings are executed with a brush or a palette knife. The main thing is they have to be beautiful - and they certainly are that. The exhibition runs until 22 June 2008.
Mark Rothko at the Kunsthalle, Hypo-Kulturstiftung
His paintings are clearly structured: large, horizontally layered colour fields are demarcated from one another to create an effect of plasticity. The artist’s intention was to paint "pictures that are intimate and intense, and are the opposite of what is decoration." Because of his simple yet unusual style, Mark Rothko is still celebrated as the most important exponent of Abstract Expressionism. He is also regarded as a pioneer of Colour Field Painting. Nevertheless, all his life the artist resisted being labelled as a painter of abstract pictures.
Born Marcus Rothkowitz in Russia in September 1903, at the age of ten he was taken to the United States by his parents. After studying at Yale and the New School of Design in New York, he began to work as an artist in 1930. Gradually groping his way towards pure colour constellations, he reduced forms to essentials. Still he continued to link ideas of content with his pictures. He always insisted that even entirely non-representational paintings were to be understood as something concrete. In January 1940, he changed his name to Rothko, the name under which he worked from then on. Only three decades later, however, Rothko put an end to a successful career by slashing his wrists in February 1970.
Following his suicide, his works continued to appreciate in value on the art market. By now Rothko is one of the ten most expensive painters in the world. In 2007 "White Center" - which until then had been owned by one of the Rockefellers - sold for 73 million dollars.
For those interested in Rothko, many of his legendary paintings are on display at the Kunsthalle, Hypo-Kulturstiftung, in downtown Munich. The exhibition runs until 27 April 2008.
Ernest Rathenau Verlag Back in Germany with a New Agenda
Following the tradition begun in the 1920s, important publications on the work of Oskar Kokoschka, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Karl Hofer, Erich Heckel, Edvard Munch and Emil Nolde were published under the aegis of Dr. Ernst Rathenau. Many of these books are still the standard scholarly catalogues of the works of those artists. In recent decades, however, not much has been heard from the distinguished publishing house. Now publisher Robert Ketterer has brought it back from New York and revived it:
"Streetprints 2000-07" by internationally-based artist Caro Jost is now the first art book to be published under new owner Robert Ketterer. This 72-page survey of the works of avant-garde artist Caro Jost is a work of art in the literal sense of the term. The visual, tactile and content aspects of her work enter on a perfect synthesis in this retrospective, thus matching the traditionally high quality standards set by the publishing house in the 1920s. "The unique history of this publishing house is both a standard and a spur for us. We are honoured to be able to preserve the great work of Dr. Ernst Rathenau and to continue it," thus Robert Ketterer.
"Streetprints 2000-07", bound in fine linen, provides the first chronological survey of the Streetprints, which have emerged from 2000 to the present. The book is available in a de luxe edition of 1000 for € 27, directly from the publishers and at retail booksellers under the International Standard Book Number ISBN 978-3-931638-95-5. Copies 1 to 100 are published as a special edition (numbered and signed).
Amnesty International Benefit Auction
The date to note is 25 January 2008. After a brief overview of the work done by Amnesty International, Robert Ketterer will ascend to the auctioneer’s lectern and sell ten works by five Bavarian artists. This will be first time that artists in Munich are to support the activities of the human rights organisation. The estimates for the works by Angelika Hofer, Ludwig Gruber, Monika Müller Leibl, Ulrike Schüler and Almut Wöhrle-Ruß range from € 200 to € 3000.
The event begins at 7.30 pm with a brief introduction to projects currently being carried out by the aid organisation in southern Africa. After the auction, the representatives of Amnesty International will be glad to take questions from the audience over a glass of wine and fingerfood. The evening will also feature live jazz.
The benefit auction will be accompanied by an exhibition of about 40 works by the artists named above. They will be shown daily at the Seidlvilla, 1b Nikolaiplatz in Munich-Schwabing from 12 noon to 7 pm between 10 January and 2 February 2008. Admission is free of charge.
Please register to attend the auction at arts@amnesty-noise.com or call +49 (0)89-18922535. You will find more information on Amnesty International at: www.amnesty.de
Amsterdam Works by Max Beckmann in Munich
Roughly a third of Max Beckmann’s œuvre dates from his ten years of exile in the Netherlands. The Leipzig artist, who emigrated to Amsterdam under the political pressures building up in 1937, was emotionally and intellectually involved from there with the terrible developments in his native Germany. The upshot was a wealth of outstanding works, that are now on display in the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich until 27 January 2008.
The Munich museum, which, alongside the St. Louis Art Museum - Beckmann began teaching at the Washington Univesity art school in St. Louis in 1947 - also owns the largest complex of Beckmann works as well as the artist’s archives, not only conveys profound insights into Beckmann’s life and work but also investigates how the artist struggled to come to terms with this extremely critical period of German history.
Anyone wishing to do more than admire Max Beckmann’s work in museums will find Beckmanns carrying affordable estimates (ranging from € 600 to € 45,000) at the Ketterer Kunst October auction in Hamburg as well as the December auction in Munich. Here the stunning Beckmanns to go under the hammer include "Bildnis der Schwester" ["Portrait of the Artist’s Sister"], painted in oils in 1899/1900 (estimate: € 35,000-45.000) as well as a watercolour over lithography done while Beckmann was in Amsterdam: "Der Zauberspiegel" ["Magic Mirror"], carrying an estimate of € 40,000-60,000.
