A Jug and Two Horses for € 35 000

Hamburg, 4 September 2007, (kk) - Moses Feygin’s “Stillleben mit Krug und Pferden” [“Still Life with Jug and Horses”] is top lot (estimate € 35 000) at the Ketterer Kunst Modern Art & Post War auction to be held at Meßberg 1, Hamburg, on 26 and 27 October 2007.

Works by Moses (Moisei Aleksandrovich) Feygin are owned by the Russian Museum in St Petersburg, the Tretyakov Gallery and the Museum for Modern Art in Moscow as well as private collections around the world. At the age of 103, Feygin is one of the most extraordinary practitioners of art in Russia and represents nearly a century of Russian art as one of the last exponents of the avant-garde.

The present oil painting (1985-87) was the result of a long working process. In its approach to shifting perspectives, it indicates the painter’s Warsaw beginnings, which were rooted in the tradition of the Moscow Cézannism espoused by the “Knave of Diamonds” movement. However, the intensive palette that glows from within is drawn from the painter’s Abstract Expressionist phase. The artist himself made the painted, rather folkloric wooden horses. They recall Feygin’s cavalry days and his affinity for horses, which he has frequently expressed in his works.

Pablo Picasso’s 1963 black-and-white linocut “L’Entreinte II” [“Embrace II”] contrasts sharply with the brilliant colour of the Feygin still life. Measuring 53 x 63.8 cm, the sheet is signed, numbered and listed in the catalogue of Picasso’s works. Carrying an estimate of € 18 000-20 000, it depicts a couple in an intimate embrace.
The estimate for a 1912 Hermann Max Pechstein woodcut, “Sommer II” [“Summer II”], is slightly lower at € 9000-16 000. This fine print in a small format (19.7 x 22 cm) is remarkable for the handling of saturated, powerful colour on smooth vellum.

The palette in Hanna Hoech’s oil painting “Statik” (ca 1955-59) is also very painterly and contrasts with the austerity title of a composition determined by geometric figures such as triangles and parallelograms. A blend of form, style and colour predominates that is reminiscent of a collage achieved with painterly devices. The estimate ranges from € 8.000-12.000.

Along with the colour aquatint “La Mariée” (1934) by Jacques Villon after a work by Marcel Duchamp and Kurt Schwitters’ silver gelatine print “Die Kultpume”, both of which are entered in the auction race carrying estimates of € 10 000-12 000 each, Max Kaus stands out with an oil painting (1933: on hardboard): “Liegendes Maedchen” [“Girl Reclining”]. The subject of the painting is probably his wife, Turu, who often sat for him in the 1930s and 1940s. The most lyrical of his pictures expressing the warmth and cosiness of the domestic atmosphere, were painted in the early 1930s.

Works by Ernst Barlach, Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Erich Heckel, Alexei von Jawlensky, Emil Nolde, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Christian Rohlfs and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec round off the Modern Art division.
The Contemporary Art division, which has its own catalogue entitled Post War, is headed by a work by Karl Otto Goetz, a leading exponent of German Informel. Carrying an estimate of € 25 000-35 000, “Telly” (1971) a work in mixed technique, belongs to a series of works in which the artist systematically varied a pictorial schema, thus arriving at a diverse range of non-representational, highly expressive pictures, all articulated and rhythmicised in entirely different ways.

Hans Hartung is another artist who works with the free forms of a dynamic creative process. A graphic gesture enriches the Hartung work “P 1958-65” in coloured chalks and charcoal. Nevertheless, Hartung’s works are always charged with the tensions generated between spontaneous jotting down and deliberate harmonisation of the pictorial elements. This volatile, free-floating dark bunch of rays, interrupted by only a few colour zones, might change hands for € 25 000-30 000.

Gerhard Hoehme’s “Pr. Blaues Duett” (1956) carries a slightly lower estimate at € 18 000-24 000. This oil painting lives entirely from colour as the physical substance from which the artist has built his composition and with which he creates imaginary spaces. Particularly stunning is the impact made by Prussian blue, which already here is revealed as one of this master’s favourite colours.

Another work that is bound to make waves in the auction room is Adolf Luther’s “Glasstreifen” [“Glass Stripes”]. Measuring 130 x 129.5 x 6.6 cm, this object (1986) bears the following stamps verso: “Energetische Plastik” [“Energy-Charged Sculpture”] and “Sehen ist sch” [“Seeing is beautiful”]. It is to be called at € 15 000-20 000.
A Sam Francis work in acrylic and water colour is in a similar estimate bracket at € 15 000-17 000. Measuring 41 x 33 cm, “Untitled (SF80-1205)” is registered in the Sam Francis Estate Archives.

Pre-sale viewings of selected works have been scheduled as follows:

11-12 October, 11am -7pm
13-14 October, 11am - 4pm
at Ketterer Kunst, Fasanenstr. 70, Berlin

16-18 October, 11am - 5pm
at Ketterer Kunst, Prinzregentenstr. 61, München

All works will be shown:
20-24 October, 11am -5pm, exept sunday
25 October, by appointment
at Ketterer Kunst, Am Meßberg 1, Hamburg

Auktion begins:
Modern Art: 26. October 2007
Post War: 27. October 2007 both at 4pm

Enquiries for Art of the 20th/21st Centuries:
Ketterer Kunst
Meßberg 1
20095 Hamburg
Barbara Guarnieri phone: 040-374961-28 (Fax: -16)
Ruth Tenschert phone: 040-374961-22 (Fax: -16)
E-Mail: infohamburg@kettererkunst.de
www.kettererkunst.de

Press enquiries:
Ketterer Kunst
Prinzregentenstraße 61
81675 München
Michaela Derra
phone: 089-55244-152 (Fax: -166)
E-mail: m.derra@kettererkunst.de

Since it was founded in 1954, Ketterer Kunst has been firmly established in the front ranks of auction houses dealing in art and rare books. While our Munich headquarters in the Prinz-Alphons Palais is responsible for the two traditional annual auctions of Modern Art & Post War, the Meßberghof in Hamburg is the venue for two traditional auctions a year, each based on the following fields: Old Masters and 19th-Century Art /Marine Art and Rare Books - Autographs - Manuscripts - Decorative Prints as well as Modern Art & Post War, with a focus on works on paper. In addition, exhibitions, special and benefit auctions for charity as well as live auctions online are regular events at Ketterer Kunst.

This release was published on openPR.