COLOGNE.- For 35 years, Galerie Clairefontaine in Luxemburg was an important player on the international art scene, due, above all, to its commitment to photography. Lempertz now has the special honour of taking on the gallery’s entire photographic inventory and offering it for sale in the current and upcoming photography auctions. The artistic breadth of the gallery is reflected in the chosen 60 photographs offered here as the start of a series of auctions.
The collection stretches from early photography of the 20th century – represented here by a still life by the Dresden pictorialist Otto Ehrhardt – through American Straight Photography with works by Edward Steichen and Edward Weston (lot 507, € 3/4,000), French Photographie Humaniste with Brassaï (lot 533, € 4/5,000) and Lucien Aigner, the reportage photography of James Nachtwey, to positions from the field of contemporary photo art with Jürgen Klauke and Joseph Beuys, alongside individual highlights from Andreas Feininger (lot 580, € 3/4,000), Helmut Newton (lot 643, € 10/15,000), William Klein (lots 583/652, each € 3/4,000), Arno Rafael Minkkinen (lots 612/613, each € 2/3,000) and Edward Burtynsky (lots 678/679, each € 10/20,000).
A further highlight of the auctions comprises a private collection focused on photography to the theme of 'youth', consisting of 25 portraits of children and adolescents from different countries and decades. Here the arc reaches from the early 20th century with Heinrich Kühn (lot 701, € 1-1,500), Hugo Erfurth (lot 700, € 3-4,000) and Aenne Biermann (lot 703, € 1,800-2,000), up to the present day. The top piece in the collection is the untitled portrait of a little boy in a red sweater by William Eggleston (lot 711, € 20/30,000). Diane Arbus (lots 704-709, € 4/6,000 to € 6/8,000), Sally Mann (lots 719-722, € 6/8,000 each) and Tom Wood (lots 712-718, € 1/1,500 to € 1,200/1,500) are each represented with several outstanding works.
In addition to these two collections with their differing orientations, individual works of various provenance are of note, such as the bookbinder Rudolf Rieser’s personal example of Lee Friedlander’s portfolio '15 photographs' (lot 622, € 18/20,000), as well as two musician portraits by Anton Corbijn (lots 654/655, each € 5/6,000).
The Modern and Contemporary Art auctions in the evening and the following day showcase some interesting higher-priced photographic works: Several works of the Düsseldorf School come from a German corporate collection and include chromogenic prints by Andreas Gursky (lots 24, 391 and 392, € 8/10,000 to 25/30,000), Candida Höfer (lot 381, €10/15,000), Axel Hütte (lots 379/380, € 7/9,000) and Thomas Ruff (lot 440, € 10/15,000). Two characteristic industry shots by Bernd and Hilla Becher (lots 314/315, € 10/15,000 to 15/20,000), each from an edition of five, and a large-format, formally reduced seascape by Elger Esser (lot 382, € 15/20,000) round off the offer.
