NEW YORK, NY.- Christie’s will offer Exceptional Impressions: The Alan and Marianne Schwartz Collection, works from the collection will be included in a dedicated live sale taking place on 23 October in New York, and as part of an online sale, Graphic Century: Featuring Exceptional Impressions from The Alan and Marianne Schwartz Collection, taking place in November. In total, the two sales will feature over 230 prints. Highlights will be on view in London from 12-13 September and 16-25 September. The full collection will be on view in New York from 19-22 October.

The Alan and Marianne Schwartz Collection is one of the largest collections of graphic art in the United States. Assembled over many decades, the collection spans the best of European Old Master prints, German Expressionism and American Modernism. Alan and Marianne Schwartz were champions of the print collecting community, and the collection was exhibited at many major institutions during their lifetime, most significantly in the landmark exhibition Master Prints of Five Centuries at the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1990.

One of the defining characteristics of the collection is its breadth. It begins at the dawn of printmaking in Europe, with works by artists such as Schongauer, Durer, Duvet, Goltzius, and van Leyden, before moving on to the giant of the seventeenth century, Rembrandt, together with his fellow Dutch masters, Van Dyck and Rubens. There is a fascinating exploration of 19th lithography, with Goya, Daumier and Manet. The late 19th century in France is well represented, with masterpieces by Toulouse-Lautrec, Bonnard, Degas. The focus then moves to Germany in the early 20th century, with Beckmann, Kollwitz, Heckel, Kirchner, Nolde and Schmidt-Rottluff, before returning to France with Braque, Miro, Matisse and Picasso.

Highlights from the collection include Picasso’s La Femme qui pleure I (Weeping Woman I), estimated at $1,200,000-1,800,000, Rembrandt’s etching The Three Crosses, estimated at $1,000,000-1,500,000, Erich Heckel’s Fränzi liegend estimated at $100,000-150,000, and Edvard Munch’s Angst, estimated at $400,000-600,000. The collection is also one of the most significant collections of early twentieth century American prints to come to market, and features important prints by Edward Hopper, Charles Sheeler, Benton Murdoch Spruance, and many others.