MUNICH.- He showed his works in exhibitions with Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, he was a rock musician and made 16 mm films. Now an artwork by the great Schifano will be called up in the auctions of Modern Art, Post War and Contemporary Art at Ketterer Kunst in Munich from 7 - 9 December.

Mario Schifano was one of the most acclaimed representatives of Italian Postmodernism. After World War II his family relocated from Libya to Rome. He had little interest in school, instead he liked restoring old ceramics, a skill he head learned from his father who was an archeologist and restorer.

But Schiffano wanted more, so he began to express his creativity in painting. He had a strong preference for monochrome color fields and experimented with newsprint, made collages and soon had his international breakthrough. Exhibitions in Italy and the USA contributed to his fame.

In the 1960s the work group of the “Monochrome“ paintings, for which he discovered common household varnish as his preferred material, came into existence. With this unconventional painting means Mario Schifano attained his very own style of which the untitled work offered in the auction is a particularly fine example. The artist applied the paint with an expressive gesture, in this case over two collaged rectangular newspaper cuttings. The artwork comes with a “Certificato di Autentica e Archiviazione" from the Archivio Mario Schifano, dated 13 November, 2017. It is registered at the Archivio Generale dell'Opera di Mario Schifano with the number 03592171111.

Find more great auction offers in the following departments:

MODERN ART
This section offers around 300 works, the array is led by Kurt Schwitters‘ “Merzzeichnung“ from 1919 and a still life by Max Beckmann (each estimated at € 400,000-600,000). Other highlights come from Albert Birkle, George Grosz, Erich Heckel, Auguste Herbin, Karl Hofer, Alexej von Jawlensky, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Oskar Kokoschka, Max Liebermann, Franz Marc, Otto Mueller, Gabriele Münter, Emil Nolde, Pablo Picasso, Leo Putz, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Max Slevogt and Alfons Walde.

POST WAR and CONTEMPORARY ART
Some of the most important works in this section, next to the extra catalog Collection Ellen Sauter, which comprises highlights by Günther Uecker and Jan Schoonhoven, can be found in the six digit realm with works by Horst Antes, Georg Baselitz, Sérgio de Camargo, Sandro Chia, Dadamaino, Yves Klein, Robert Longo, Heinz Mack, Henry Moore, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Blinky Palermo, Otto Piene, Serge Poliakoff, Gerhard Richter and Andy Warhol.