Monday, November 23, 2009

Auction: Photographie, November 26, 2009 @Villa Grisebach

Villa Grisebach opens the German photographs season with its sale in Berlin later this week. I'm always interested to see what will be available in this part of the auction season - in general, the German houses do a consistently good job of delivering an unusual mix of quality material at very reasonable prices. Those collectors who are entirely focused on the US and London markets certainly miss out. Overall, there are a total of 188 lots on offer in this sale, with a Total High Estimate of 662400€. (Catalog cover at right, via Villa Grisebach.)

Here's the breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including 7500€): 172
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): 456400€

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between 7500€ and 35000€): 16
Total Mid Estimate: 206000€

Total High Lots (high estimate above 35000€): 0
Total High Estimate: NA

The top lot by High estimate is lot 1382, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Sea of Galilee, Golan, 1992, at 24000-26000€.

In general, this is a well balanced sale, with many photographers represented by more than one lot. That said, here's the list of the photographers who are represented by three or more lots in the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Wolfgang Tillmans (5)
Dieter Appelt (3)
Abe Frajndlich (3)
Edmund Kesting (3)
William Klein (3)
Joel Meyerowitz (3)
Arnold Newman (3)
Dorothy Norman (3)
Antanas Sutkus (3)
Herbert Tobias (3)

Images of interest for our collection include:

Lot 1208 Bernd and Hilla Becher, Forderturm bei Merthyr Tydfill, Sudwales, 1966
Lot 1304 Edward Steichen, The Maypole-Empire State Building, New York, 1932/Later (at right)
Lot 1324 Ludwig Windstosser, Pintsch Bamag, Gas Mitte, 1950s

The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here.

Photographie
November 26th

Villa Grisebach Auktionen
Fasanenstraße 25
D-10719 Berlin

No comments: