LONDON.- Christie's announces the sale of Spellbound – The Hegewisch Collection, one of the most distinguished and important private collections of prints and works on paper assembled in the 20th century. The first auction of works from this collection will take place on 16 October 2025, during the 20/21 Marquee Week coinciding with the Frieze Art Fairs in London, with subsequent sales scheduled for March and September 2026. With an overall estimate of around £10,000,000-15,000,000, Spellbound – The Hegewisch Collection offers an opportunity to acquire rare and important prints and works on paper by some of the greatest artists of their time. Its remarkable range - spanning from exquisite Old Master prints by Dürer and Rembrandt and the dark visions of Goya and Redon to the psychological intensity of Munch, Dix, and Beckmann, in addition to masterpieces by Picasso - offers a deep and moving insight into the beguiling power of the graphic arts.
From its beginnings, the Hegewisch Collection was guided by dedication, intellect, and an unwavering eye for the unusual and outstanding. Klaus Hegewisch, a Hamburg merchant and passionate sailor turned connoisseur after World War II, built a collection defined by artistic excellence, psychological depth and personal resonance. The title Spellbound reflects the obsessive intensity with which he collected, as well as the enchanting, at times disquieting nature inherent to many of the motifs he felt drawn to. For Hegewisch, assembling these works was a source of wonder and enjoyment, but also a means of confronting the traumas of his own past - a tension evident in the collection's exploration of the human soul through the enchanting, the melancholic and the uncanny.
The Hegewisch family lived with their collection, however strongly believed it should be shared. From early on, works were lent generously to exhibitions across Europe, the U.S.A., Japan and Australia. In 1997, a dedicated space -the Hegewisch-Kabinett - was established at the Hamburger Kunsthalle to house rotating exhibitions dedicated to individual artists and a variety of subjects, running for two decades and earning critical acclaim.
Spellbound – The Hegewisch Collection Part I comprises 55 lots, presented in seven chapters: Charms, Spells and Curses; Body and Spirit; Wondrous Creatures; The Self and the World; War and Death; Melancholy and Landscapes of the Mind. Each theme opens a window into different aspects of the collection and the essence of the works assembled, offering a compelling exploration of the human condition through the mediums of drawing and printmaking.
Pivotal works by Pablo Picasso play a central role in the offering, with highlights including etching Le repas frugal (1904; estimate: £1,500,000-2,500,000), his first great print and a key work between the Rose and the Blue Periods; and the monumental etching La Minotauromachie (1935; estimate: £700,000-1,000,000), often interpreted as an allegorical self-portrait. Amongst his drawings, a preparatory study for Les Demoiselles d'Avignon from 1907 - Nez quart de Brie (Étude pour Les Demoiselles d'Avignon ou Nu avec draperie) (estimate: £500,000-800,000) - stands out, originally from the legendary collection of Leo and Gertrude Stein and presented here alongside a Dan-Guerzé mask from the Ivory Coast, demonstrating the influence of African art during this crucial period of his stylistic development. Further works include his great aquatint portrait of Françoise Gilot, La femme à la fenêtre (estimate: £120,000-180,000), a lyrical image of solitude and longing; the charcoal drawing Le Couple (Les Misérables) (1904; estimate: £70,000-100,000); and La Coiffure (Femme se coiffant), the latter two also formerly from the Stein collection. La Coiffure, conceived in 1906, is offered both as a drawing (estimate: £150,000-250,000) and a rare bronze (estimate: £200,000-300,000), an example of the many interrelations between works, which Hegewisch was fascinated by and sought out.
The sale also brings together a selection of Edvard Munch's most famous and emotionally charged prints. The lithograph Madonna (Woman making love) from 1895 (estimate: £70,000-100,000) fuses beauty, eroticism, and mortality, while the woodcut Melancholy III (1902) (estimate: £120,000-180,000) is a poignant meditation on existential isolation, a central theme of the artist's oeuvre. In Self-Portrait (1895; estimate: £40,000-60,000) Munch confronts his own mortality with unflinching honesty by depicting himself with a skeleton arm. In a similarly melancholic spirit, The Sick Child I (1896; estimate: £120,00-180,000) is a portrait of his older sister who died of tuberculosis in her youth - an event which haunted the artist throughout his life and laid the foundation for the raw psychological intensity especially of his early works.
Francisco de Goya is represented by two of his great sets of etchings: Los Caprichos (estimate: £120,000-180,000), first published in 1799 and at the time the largest series of prints ever conceived by a single artist, with its biting satire and fantastical imagery; and Los Desastres de la Guerra (estimate: £50,000-70,000), created between 1810-20 but only published posthumously in 1863, offering a harrowing account of the Napoleonic War in Spain and the crushingly oppressive and reactionary regime that followed it.
Albrecht Dürer and Rembrandt stand out as the towering masters of printmaking before Goya. Highlights include Dürer's engravings Adam and Eve (1504; estimate: £120,000-180,000) and Melencolia I (1514; estimate: £100,000-150,000), two one of the most famous prints of the Renaissance, while his two early prints The Dream of the Doctor (circa 1498; estimate: £25,000-35,000) and Saint Eustace (circa 1501; estimate: £80,000-120,000) set the tone for a collection teeming with apparitions and visitations of all kinds.
Rembrandt is represented by his best-known and most-loved landscape etching The Three Trees (1643; estimate: £200,000-300,000), admired for its highly atmospheric depiction of a storm about to break. Hans Baldung's woodcut The Bewitched Groom (1544; estimate: £8,000-12,000) encapsulates the collector's fascination with sorcery and the supernatural, while two drawings by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and a preparatory sketch by Adolph von Menzel demonstrate his appreciation of virtuoso draughtsmanship.
No less accomplished are some fine examples of German Realism, Expressionism and Neue Sachlichkeit, found in prints and drawings by Käthe Kollwitz, Max Beckmann, Ludwig Meidner and Otto Dix, among others. Kollwitz's charcoal sketch Stehende Frau, nach links (1888; estimate: £35,000-55,000) is a preparatory work for a print illustrating a scene from Emile Zola's famous novel Germinal, first published in 1885, and an emblematic image of fear and foreboding. Beckmann's Selbstporträt mit Krankenpflegeruniform und Autobrille (estimate: £40,000-60,000) was spontaneously drawn in the midst of World War I, in 1915, when the artist served as a medical orderly, while Ludwig Meidner's Apokalyptische Vision (1914; estimate: £40,000-60,000) seems to foresee the horrors of the war to come, unsparingly depicted later by Otto Dix in his series Der Krieg (1924; estimate: £180,000-250,000), a set of fifty etchings which stand uniquely alongside Goya's Desastres in their depiction of the brutality of war.
French art of the 19th and early 20th century features prominently in the sale, with highlights including Delacroix's Faust et Mephisto dans la nuit du Sabbat (estimate: £25,000-35,000), a preparatory drawing for an illustrated edition of Goethe's Faust published in 1828; Odilon Redon's grotesque Hommage à Goya (estimate: £20,000-30,000), a set of six lithographs of 1885; and Fernand Léger's pencil drawing Le Fumeur from 1921 (estimate: £180,000-250,000), a work of great formal rigour combined with bawdy humour. The sale also features more lyrical works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Cezanne and Henri Matisse.
Tim Schmelcher, International Specialist, Christie's London: “Christie's is honoured to present this remarkable collection, which reflects a life-long dialogue with art on paper. More than a survey of masterpieces, it represents a deeply personal journey through five centuries of European art and imagination, shaped by the collector's own passions and demons. From Dürer and Goya to Picasso, Munch and Dix, the Hegewisch Collection encompasses not only the highest achievements of drawing and printmaking, but reveals unforeseen correspondences between different mediums, artists and periods, and opens sometimes enchanting, sometimes unsettling views into the depths of the human soul.”
Highlights from the collection will be on view at Christie's London during the Prints and Multiples exhibition (11 – 25 September), Christie's Paris (17-30 September) and New York (25-29 September). Spellbound - The Hegewisch Collection Part I will be exhibited in its entirety at King Street in London as part of the 20/21 Marquee Week, opening on 8 October 2025. Please visit christies.com for more information.
On 12 September, Christie's Education will offer a livestreamed conversation with Tim Schmelcher, International Specialist, Prints & Multiples, on the Hegewisch Collection at 6.30pm BST. The online event is open to all.
