Richter painting emerges at auction

Eisläuferin is part of an outstanding collection of postwar German art to be sold at Sotheby’s One of Gerhard Richter’s earliest paintings, which the artist thought had been destroyed long ago, has emerged in the most significant collection of recent German art ever to come on the market. Richter’s paintings over the past 50 years are all in his catalogue raisonné – a comprehensive list of his works. Eisläuferin, “skater”, holds a special place at No 2, but until now the only version available has been a poor-quality mono illustration on Richter’s website. The original is expected to fetch up to £3m Sotheby’s is to auction Eisläuferin along with other works from the 1960s and 1970s. The sale, in June, will include canvases by Georg Baselitz and Sigmar Polke, all assembled by German industrialist Count Christian Duerckheim. Cheyenne Westphal, Sotheby’s head of contemporary art in Europe, said of Eisläuferin: “It is a special painting last exhibited in 1963 in a very, very early group show that Richter was part of and then the artist lost sight of the piece. Basically Richter and everyone around him thought that the work was destroyed.” “We are working very closely with Richter’s archive and the team around the artist are very excited,” she said. The work is one of 59 in the sale, with a total estimated value in excess of £33m. “It is a truly outstanding collection. We’ve never seen anything like it on the market,” said Westphal, describing the paintings as a “portrait of a generation of artists”. She added: “To have a collection of this quality, depth and unbelievable freshness has never happened before.” Richter, who will have a retrospective at Tate Modern this autumn to mark his 80th birthday, is also represented by works such as Telefonierender, an early photo-painting, and 1024 Farben, a vivid colour chart. Many of the works have not been seen publicly since they were exhibited in the early 1960s. One of the auction’s highlights is Baselitz’s The Big Night Down the Drain, which Sotheby’s believes is “the most important German work of art of the postwar period to come to the market”. The canvas – showing a short, ugly man holding his outsized erect penis – was inspired by a newspaper story about Irish poet Brendan Behan reading his work on stage, drunk and with his flies open. In 1963 it was confiscated by the German authorities for “infringement of public morality”. Baselitz got the painting back only after several years, and several court cases. The Big Night Down the Drain has a sale estimate of £2m-£3m. During a 2007 retrospective in London, curator Norman Rosenthal wrote: “The artist recently stated in public that perhaps he never has and never will make a finer painting.” Duerckheim has other important examples of the artist’s work including Spekulatius, from the Hero series. One of the Polke works is Jungle, the largest of the artist’s dot paintings, estimated to be worth £3m-£4m. “We all thought it was a much smaller work than it is,” said Westphal. “When I finally got to see the painting I nearly fainted. It was so amazing and such a discovery.” Duerckheim says he is selling because he feels the collection is complete and it is time to start something new. It will be shown publicly in London before the sale. Gerhard Richter Germany Europe Mark Brown guardian.co.uk

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