NEW YORK, NY.- Christie’s presents the sale of three works by Carl Andre, Sol LeWitt, and Dan Flavin from the collection of Paul Maenz to be sold in the evening sale of Post-War and Contemporary Art on November 10th. Through his gallery and the artists he represented, Paul Maenz had a profound impact on Cologne’s importance as a cultural and artistic center. Specialized in works by conceptual artists early on, the Galerie Paul Maenz Köln was instrumental in introducing avant-garde art of the 1970s and 1980s to Europe. New York and Cologne have had a decisive influence on the art world, both cities afford the kind of climate that artists value and possess intuitions that both challenge and support the art scene.

“It feels of course somewhat difficult to separate of some of the most important works from my collection’s portfolio. Not only are these very beautiful and important pieces, but to a certain extent they represent my own biography–aesthetic "headwaters.” But for very pragmatic reasons, I am glad that these works which were created for larger spaces than I could provide, will be on view to the public at Christie’s in London and in New York. After having been packed and stored away for ten years now, I think they should come out in the open again where they can be viewed, studied and enjoyed. Their language is international. And finally: possession without use cannot be the intention”, declared Paul Maenz.

Paul Maenz was born in 1939 in Germany. In the mid-1960s Maenz worked as an art director for the American advertising agency Young & Rubicam in Frankfurt, where he met with the German artist Peter Roehr, who had a profound impact on how Maenz thought about art. From 1965 to 1967 Maenz lived in New York City, again working as an art director for Young & Rubicam. He also founded, together with Willoughby Sharp, “Kineticism Press” which was “dedicated to the total distribution of artistic information in all media.” It was during this period that Maenz bought his first art work from Sol LeWitt’s studio. In 1967 Maenz moved back to Germany. He organized the influential exhibition “Serielle Formationen,” that introduced Sol LeWitt, Carl Andre, Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Jan Dibbets and Agnes Martin, to Germany. In 1970, Maenz started his gallery for contemporary art in Cologne with a show by Hans Haacke–a German expatriate living in New York–to be followed by other Conceptual artists like Joseph Kosuth, Robert Barry, Art & Language artists, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin and Hanne Darboven. Parallel to this Maenz strongly featured some major artist of the Italian Arte Povera movement, like Giulio Paolini, Giuseppe Penone, Salvo, Giovanni Anselmo and Luciano Fabro; including in the late 1970s also the then-current Transavanguardia scene with Francesco Clemente, Sandro Chia, Enzo Cucchi and Mimmo Paladino. The beginning of the 1980s was a turning point for the gallery and for German art in general. Maenz organized the landmark exhibition “Mülheimer Freiheit & Interessante Bilder aus Deutschland,” which introduced younger German artists of the so-called neo-expressionism movement. The exhibition showed that this generation of German artists after Beuys, was–like Anselm Kiefer, whom Maenz represented throughout the 1980s–fundamentally not only interested in making a point as young painters but also as the first postmodern generation. Having been exceptionally successful as a gallerist for twenty years the increasingly commercial tendency of the art world would eventually lead Paul Maenz to close his gallery in 1990. His private collection went as a long-term-loan for twelve years to the Kunstsammlungen zu Weimar, where it helped setting up the first contemporary art museum in East Germany after the country had been united again.