Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Rediscovery of a painting
Ketterer Kunst: Evening Sale in Munich
7 June 2024
Oil on canvas, 120 x 145 cm, Evening Sale June 7, 2024
Photo Courtesy of Ketterer Kunst
For the first time published in color: to date only known from black-and-white photographs.
Grand-sized painting from the best "Brücke" era.
Part of the seminal "Brücke" exhibition at the Berlin art salon of Fritz Gurlitt (1912) shortly after it was made.
Estimate price: € 2 - 3 million.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's life and work have been subject to extensive research. And now this sensation: Ketterer Kunst’s Evening Sale on the occasion of the company’s 70th anniversary on June 7 features a painting that could not be located for decades. Its outstanding significance in the oeuvre of the co-founder of the "Brücke" group had been forgotten. There were some publications, and there was evidence of the work in the sensational Brücke exhibition at Galerie Fritz Gurlitt in Berlin in 1912, as well as of a later exhibition at Paul Cassirer in Berlin in 1923. Now the collectors from Baden-Württemberg, who have enjoyed the painting for generations - eighty years to be precise - in private and without any public attention, have decided to sell it.
Measuring 120 by 145 centimeters, “Tanz im Varieté (Steptanz)“ is an extraordinarily large picture in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s oeuvre, it was made in 1911, the year the artist relocated from Dresden to the metropolis Berlin, a cosmopolitan city of two million even back then, a vibrant melting pot that promised inspiration and, of course, more market presence. The beginning of an extremely prolific creative phase; his works from that period up until the First World War are among his most outstanding accomplishments. Today they are almost exclusively museum-owned, while just a few are in private hands. Their market presence has been extremely low in the last couple of years.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s famous street scenes come from that era; all of his cabaret and circus pictures are expressions of an urban liveliness, a revealing joie de vivre and eroticism. The social and cultural changes are tangible in his motifs and compositions. Emotion and harshness are combined in an equally provocative and convincing way. At the same time, our work is a very characteristic, extraordinarily successful and decisive example of Kirchner's endeavor to render the moment of a powerful and energetic motion ("My painting is a painting of motion").
Estimated at 2 to 3 million euros, the painting is mentioned in Donald E. Gordon's authoritative catalogue raisonné (1968) accompanied by an old black-and-white photograph, however, it is marked as "whereabouts unknown". Neither the estate and leading experts nor the archive had ever seen it in color.
KETTERER KUNST
Ketterer Kunst with its headquarters in Munich and branches in Hamburg, Cologne and Berlin, as well as with a global network of experts, was founded in 1954. Robert Ketterer is the second generation to run the family business. The auction house has a focus on Contemporary, Modern and 19th Century Art and on Rare Books from five centuries. In its market segment, Ketterer Kunst is the number 1 in the German language region and is in the global top ten of the strongest-selling art auction houses (artprice.com).
UPCOMING DATES:
Anniversary Auction – 70 Years of Ketterer Kunst
May 27, 2024 Rare Books Auction in Hamburg
June 7, 2024 Contemporary Art Day Sale, Evening Sale in Munich
June 8, 2024 19th Century, Modern Art Day Sale in Munich
KETTERER KUNST
