LONDON.- An important collection of German Expressionist works, including a copy of Der Blaue Reiter the influential almanac of the Blue Rider movement, are for sale at
Bonhams Print Sale in London on July 11.
The collection was assembled over many years by Philip and Marian Raup. Dr Philip Raup, who died last year at the age of 97, was Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota. He played a key role in re-establishing agricultural production in Germany at the end of the war when the population faced starvation, an achievement of which he was rightly proud.
Der Blaue Reiter was published in Munich in 1912 in an edition of 1,200 and was the work of two giants of 20th Century German art, Franz Marc, who was to die in the First World War, and the Russian émigré Wassily Kandinsky. It had a profound influence on the direction of German and European artistic development, elevating folk and primitive art over more established influences and styles. The almanac was reprinted in 1914 but the copy for sale at Bonham is from the original 1912 print run. It is estimated at £2,500-3,500.
The Raup collection contains work by all the major names of German Expressionism and features a portfolio of prints - Meistermappe des Staatlichen Bauhauses - produced to raise funds for the Bauhaus school of art. These include works by Kandinsky and fellow Blue Rider member Paul Klee. The estimate of £70,000-100,000 reflects its quality and rarity. There are also important works by Christian Rohlfs, Käthe Kollwitz, Max Pechstein and Karl Schmidt-Rotluff. These latter two artists were members of the Dresden based Die Brücke (The Bridge) which in 1905 had initiated the interest in primitivism in Germany later pursued by the Blue Rider group.