The auctions held by the Berlin-based auction house Grisebach — renowned for presenting museum-quality artworks — are always among the most anticipated events of the year. This year’s winter sale, scheduled for late November, is no exception.
The program opens on November 27 at 2:00 p.m. with the sale of the Walter Bauer Collection, which brings together paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures created between 1799 and 1961. Featured artists include Caspar David Friedrich, Edvard Munch, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Ernst Wilhelm Nay, with Paula Modersohn-Becker’s Self-Portrait (1906) as a highlight.
At 6:00 p.m., the highly anticipated evening sale Selected Works follows, offering nearly fifty lots spanning many eras and movements and featuring works by masters such as Max Liebermann, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Max Beckmann, Gerhard Richter, Per Kirkeby, and Anselm Kiefer.
Among the most striking pieces is Günther Uecker’s White Wind (1986), a majestic work that expresses the artist’s engagement with light. In his unmistakable style, Uecker transforms the rigid materiality of the nail into a vibrant, three-dimensional composition reminiscent of wind-swept grass, an effect that shifts with the changing daylight. White Wind is appearing on the auction market for the very first time.
Lyonel Feininger’s painting Dune, Ray of Light I conveys a similar sense of motion and vitality: one can almost feel the Baltic Sea breeze drifting between the clouds as sunlight breaks through. Created in 1933, a period of profound upheaval for the artist, the work marks a pivotal moment in his career. After the closure of the Bauhaus in Dessau (1932), Feininger moved to the United States, where the painting was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in 1944–45, cementing his recognition on the American art scene.
Flowers are among the most beloved and recurring themes in the work of Emil Nolde. After his early experiments at the turn of the twentieth century, they became central to his artistic output, particularly after he built his house-studio in Seebüll, surrounded by a lush garden. His Zinnias and Sunflowers (1940) is an extraordinary example: yellow and red blossoms dominate the canvas, set against an intense blue background. For Nolde, the garden was a daily source of inspiration, a way to capture the fleeting beauty of nature on canvas.
Other notable works include Max Liebermann (On the Beach at Noordwijk, 1908), Rudolf Schlichter (Hausvogteiplatz, 1926), Ernst Wilhelm Nay (In Yellow Company, 1955), Georg Baselitz (A Worker, 1967), Andy Warhol (Marie-Chantal Miller, 1985), Per Kirkeby (First Summer, 1987), and Gerhard Richter (Fuji, 1996).
Of particular interest is the painting The Lange Bridge Seen from the Mills by the important Berlin view painter Eduard Gaertner, long considered lost. The work was last exhibited in 1856, the year it was created, at the Academy of Arts in Berlin, where it appeared in the catalog as “property of City Councilor Güßfeld.”
The painting depicts a stretch of the Spree River in Berlin-Mitte, with the Lange Bridge (today the Rathaus Bridge) at the center. While the left bank, with a corner of the Berlin Palace hidden among the trees, recedes into the background, the right bank near the Nikolai quarter is illuminated by the evening light. Among the buildings stands out an elegant, Venetian-style white residence identified as the private home of the merchant and court supplier J. F. W. Güßfeldt — very likely the same collector mentioned in the exhibition catalog. It is plausible that Gaertner painted the work on Güßfeldt’s commission.
The rediscovery of this exceptionally fine painting represents not only a significant addition to Gaertner’s oeuvre but also a valuable contribution to the urban history of Berlin, depicted here in a form long vanished.
Grisebach’s Winter Auction continue on November 28 with the Modern & 19th Century Art sale (11:00 a.m.) and the Contemporary Art sale (4:00 p.m.).
All sales will be held at Villa Grisebach, Fasanenstraße 25, Berlin. Previews will be open from November 20 to 26.
