E-Photo
Issue #150  10/20/2008
 
Villa Grisebach Holds Auction Nov. 27th

On November 27 at 3 pm, Villa Grisebach Auktionen will hold its fall auction in modern and contemporary photography in Berlin with around 250 lots for sale.

Spearheaded by Larry Clark's portfolio "Tulsa", published in 1980, with an estimate of 40,000-60,000 euro (the euro is currently $1.33), Villa Grisebach starts off its fall auction with this American classic. Including 50 images, Clark's portfolio documents the youth scene of his hometown in the late 1960s with an unsparing and direct attitude.

Other masterpieces offered in this sale are the well-known "Portfolio 1" by the renown German architectural photographer Werner Mantz and published by Edition Galerie Schürmann & Kicken in 1977 (12,000-18,000 euro), as well as Ruth Orkin's "American Girl in Italy", which by now has been recognized as an icon in the history of photography (8,000-10,000 euro).

Photographs by Albert Renger-Patzsch will be represented in this auction with a series of garden landscapes depicting the country estate of the Warburg family near Hamburg. Commonly considered as rarities, several exceptional vintage prints are also on sale this fall, including a portrait of Ellen Auerbach by Grete Stern (estimate of 3,000-4,000 euro) and an image taken by the American photographer Helen Levitt depicting James Agee, as well as a unpublished variation around 1940 from the series "The Reds".

In addition, the fall photography auction will offer works by Josef Maria Eder & Eduard Valenta, William Henry Fox Talbot, Félix Teynard and Eadweard Muybridge, among other 19th-century work, as well as 20th-century photographs by Bernd & Hilla Becher, Erwin Blumenfeld, Robert Capa, Frantisek Drtikol, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Hugo Erfurth, Andreas Feininger, Man Ray, Josef Sudek, Paul Freiberger, Martin Munkàcsi, Else Thalemann, Max Baur, Tato (Guglielmo Sansoni), Josef Ehm and Erich Salomon.

For a number of years, Villa Grisebach Auctions has had a section featuring contemporary photography. The artists represented in this section vary from familiar names to new discoveries. Top lot in this segment this fall is an early work by Andreas Gursky entitled "Teneriffa, Bajamar" produced in 1987 (40,000-60,000 euro). Other works include Shirin Neshat's "I Am It's Secret" (6,000-8,000 euro), Peter Beard's Polaroid "Loliondo Lion Charge" (2,500-3,500 euro), as well as three examples of Jörg Sasse's celebrated color landscape photographs (6,000-8,000 euro each).

Photography from the Scandinavian schools will be represented in this sale with two rather picturesque works by Olafur Eliasson from his Iceland series (7,000-9,000 euro), a large-format, panoramic image entitled Qaanaaq by Tiina Itkonen (8,000-12,000 euro), as well as two b/w photographs by Pentti Sammallahti (800-1,200 euro each).

Works by internationally renowned photographers such as Sebastiao Salgado, Stephen Shore, Massimo Vitali, Bettina Rheims, Gregory Crewdson and Robert Mapplethorpe will complement the offer in Villa Grisebach's contemporary photography sales this fall.

A printed catalogue is available from the auction house, and it can also be viewed on their website a few weeks before the actual auction. A preview exhibition of selected works from the collection will be held at Villa Grisebach Auktionen GmbH, Fasanenstraße 73, 10719 Berlin from November 22–26, Sat.-Tues. 10am-6:30pm, Wed., 10am-5pm. For details, see http://www.villa-grisebach.de . For more information, contact Franziska Schmidt (head of the photography department), phone: +49 30-885 915-0, extension -27; fax: +49 30-885915-4627 (from the U.S. dial 011 then the number); or email: f.schmidt@villa-grisebach.de .