MUNICH.- A monumental painting by Peter Doig and an important early abstraction by Pierre Soulages will lead Ketterer Kunst's Evening Sale on December 4, 2026, in Munich, bringing together 60 works spanning modern and contemporary art. With estimates reaching €2.5 million, the auction presents an international selection of paintings and works on paper by artists including Marc Chagall, Max Beckmann, Lyonel Feininger, Pablo Picasso, and Alexej von Jawlensky.

The sale's highest-valued work is Peter Doig's By a River (2004), an atmospheric oil painting estimated at €1.5 million to €2.5 million ($1.68 million to $2.8 million). Measuring 200 by 186 centimeters, the composition belongs to a significant period in the Scottish-born artist's career, when his experiences in Trinidad became increasingly important to his distinctive approach to figurative painting.

Created four years after Doig settled in Trinidad, By a River depicts an enigmatic, solitary figure wearing a flowing blue garment against a landscape of muted green tones. The painting exemplifies the artist's ability to transform seemingly familiar imagery into psychologically charged scenes in which memory, imagination, and observation merge.

According to the auction catalog, the figure originated in a postcard from India that Doig had purchased years earlier at a London flea market. Fascinated by the mysterious appearance of the tiny bearded figure, the artist developed the motif through a series of prints titled Black Palms before incorporating it into the monumental composition.

The work reflects recurring themes in Doig's practice, particularly solitude, contemplation, and the relationship between human figures and their natural surroundings. Its introspective subject also connects with a broader history of melancholy in Western art, recalling the contemplative figures of artists from Albrecht Dürer to Edvard Munch.

By a River has an extensive exhibition history. It appeared in Peter Doig – Metropolitain at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich and the Kestnergesellschaft in Hanover in 2004, and was included in the 54th Carnegie International in Pittsburgh later that year. Subsequent presentations included Essential Painting at the National Museum of Art in Osaka in 2006 and Peter Doig: No Foreign Lands, shown in Edinburgh and Montreal in 2013–2014.

The painting was acquired from Contemporary Fine Arts in Berlin in 2004 and has remained in a German private collection since then. Ketterer Kunst describes it as the first large-format Doig painting to appear on the German auction market.

The second-highest estimate belongs to Pierre Soulages's Peinture 81 x 60 cm, 2 mai 1957, a powerful example of the French artist's early investigations into black pigment, texture, and light. Estimated at €1 million to €1.5 million ($1.12 million to $1.68 million), the 1957 canvas measures 81 by 60 centimeters.

Broad, intersecting black brushstrokes dominate the composition, creating a dramatic structure against a background of reddish-brown, ochre, and pale tones. Rather than treating black as an absence of color, Soulages employed its material qualities to produce subtle variations in luminosity, depth, and movement.

The painting dates from a decisive decade in his career, when his reputation was expanding internationally. Soulages participated in documenta in Kassel in 1955 and 1959, while exhibitions in Europe and the United States helped establish him as one of the leading figures of postwar abstraction.

Created more than two decades before the development of his celebrated Outrenoir paintings beginning in 1979, the work already demonstrates his intense interest in the interaction between painted surfaces and reflected light.

The canvas was exhibited at Galerie de France in Paris in 1957, the year of its creation, and is documented in Pierre Encrevé's catalogue raisonné. Previously part of a Swiss corporate collection, it was sold through Ketterer Kunst in 2012 and subsequently entered a private collection in southern Germany.

Another major highlight is Marc Chagall's Mystère du Matin (1946–1948), estimated at €800,000 to €1.2 million. The painting brings together several of the artist's most recognizable motifs, including flowers, birds, and dreamlike figures, in a composition associated with love, remembrance, and the emotional aftermath of personal loss.

Painted during the years following the death of Chagall's wife Bella, the work reflects the artist's ability to combine intimate autobiography with a poetic visual language. Its provenance begins with the New York publisher and collector Anton Schutz, who acquired it directly from Chagall in 1948. It later entered a German private collection in 1977, where it has remained for nearly five decades.

The work was exhibited in Japan in 1963 and in Toulouse in 1967.

The auction also includes Lyonel Feininger's Alte Amerikanische Lokomotive (1910), estimated at €600,000 to €900,000. The early painting captures the German-American artist's fascination with industrial subjects and movement during his transition toward modernism. Exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris in 1911, it subsequently appeared in major American museum exhibitions, including presentations at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Max Beckmann's Blick von der Terrasse in Monte Carlo (1935), estimated at €600,000 to €800,000, provides another important connection to European modernism. Painted from memory while Beckmann was living under increasing political pressure in Nazi Germany, the Riviera landscape presents an image of luminous Mediterranean freedom at a time when the artist's personal circumstances had become increasingly restricted.

The painting comes from the Fritz Eugen and Hannemarie Kropatscheck Collection and was previously owned by Beckmann's friend and publisher Reinhard Piper, who acquired it directly from the artist in 1936. It was on permanent loan to the Hamburger Kunsthalle from 2020 to 2026.

The diversity of the December auction illustrates Ketterer Kunst's broad engagement with twentieth-century art, from German Expressionism and classical modernism to the international revival of figurative painting and postwar abstraction.

The Evening Sale, Auction 612, will take place at Ketterer Kunst's headquarters at Joseph-Wild-Straße 18 in Munich on Friday, December 4, 2026, beginning at 5 p.m. A further Day Sale, featuring lots 100 through 355, is scheduled for Saturday, December 5, at 1 p.m.

Ahead of the auctions, works will be presented at several exhibition venues in Germany, with the complete selection available for viewing in Munich from November 29 through December 3.

Collectors may participate in person, by telephone, through absentee bids, or online. The estimates are pre-sale expectations rather than realized prices, with the results to be determined when bidding concludes.