Karl & Faber art auctions

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Karl & Faber Art Auctions GmbH
legal form GmbH
founding 1923
Seat Munich , GermanyGermanyGermany 
management Rupert Keim
Branch Art auctions
Website www.karlundfaber.de

Karl & Faber Kunstauktionen GmbH is an art auction house founded in Munich in 1923 with a specialization in the fine arts of the 15th - 21st centuries. In terms of sales volume, Karl & Faber is the fifth largest art auction house in Germany. Karl & Faber Kunstauktionen has been the art house in the last few years that has developed most dynamically in the DA-CH region since 2010.

General

Karl & Faber art auctions at Amiraplatz in Munich

The house employs art experts in four departments: Old Masters , 19th Century , Modern Art and Contemporary Art . One focus of the activities is provenance research .

Karl & Faber has its main location in Munich. The auction house also has a branch in Hamburg, a branch in Düsseldorf and representative offices in Tegernsee , Basel , London , Italy , Austria and the USA .

At the main location in Munich, Karl & Faber conducts six regular auctions per year, each of which is dedicated to a different focus. The auctions are open to the public and can be followed live over the Internet. The lot values ​​sold so far were between 500 and 975,000 euros.

Since spring 2019, Karl & Faber art auctions have also been conducting so-called online only auctions.

In addition to the auction business, Karl & Faber organizes sales exhibitions of modern and contemporary art. There will also be lectures and panel discussions. Since 2008 the company has been awarding the Karl & Faber Art Prize together with the Foundation of the Munich Art Academy every three years.

In 2017, the auction house auctioned works valued at around € 14 million.

history

In 1923 the art historian Georg Karl and the Germanist Curt von Faber du Faur founded the Karl & Faber auction house in Munich. The focus of the art and literature antiquarian bookshop was initially on book sales and auctions. The first auction took place in 1927: the top lot “ The adventurous Simplicissimus ” by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen from the Victor Manheimer collection achieved a result of 1750 gold marks . In 1939 Curt von Faber du Faur left the operational business and emigrated to the USA, where he initially worked as a visiting professor at Harvard University and finally in 1944 became Research Associate Professor at Yale .

From then on, Georg Karl ran the business on his own: In the years that followed, auctions were held, such as the auction of books from the library of the Augsburg businessman Markus Fugger or works from the collection of the Oettingen-Wallerstein princes . The 25th and last auction of the war years was moved to Murnau in 1944 for security reasons. In the post-war years, art was auctioned separately for the first time in the house's 30th auction.

Louis Karl, the then 19-year-old son of Georg Karl, joined the auctioneer in 1961 and took over the company ten years later as the sole owner. He shifted the focus of the house from book sales and auctions to art auctions. Louis Karl also regularly showed exhibitions and auctioned collections such as that of the publisher Reinhard Piper in 1981 .

Rupert Keim and his family acquired the company in 2003. The range of contemporary art was expanded and various representative offices opened in Europe and the USA. Important auctions in recent years have included the auctions of the Walter Bareiss Collection (2007) or the auction of part of the Marvin and Janet Fishman Collection (2010) at which objects of German art from the 1920s and 30s were auctioned. In 2015, "Druckgraphik des Deutschen Expressionismus" was published from the Ahlers Expressionist Collection, Herford.

Auctions

Contemporary art and art after 1945

In the field of contemporary art and art after 1945, works by artists such as Ernst Wilhelm Nay , Willi Baumeister , Gerhard Hoehme , Emil Schumacher , Fred Thieler and Joseph Beuys are regularly auctioned. Another focus is on trading in Pop Art graphics .

Modern art

Auctions for works of modern art have been held since the 1950s. Representatives of modern art, whose works were regularly to be found in the auctions, include: Wassily Kandinsky , Alexej von Jawlensky , Gabriele Münter and Alfred Kubin as well as the so-called Brücke artists such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , Erich Heckel , Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Emil Nolde . In addition to paintings and works on paper, prints and sculptures were also called up. A well-known painting that was auctioned by Karl & Faber was Heinrich Campendonk's "Girl with a Cat". In addition, other works such as bronze works ( Max Beckmann's “Kriechende Frau”) lithographs ( Marc Chagall's “Daphnis and Chloe”) or Pablo Picasso's “brush drawing of a woman with a cat” came up for auction.

19th century art

In this area, the main focus of the house is on southern German artists from around 1800, such as Franz and Wilhelm von Kobell , Johann Georg von Dillis and Cantius Dillis. In 2007 the house was given a private collection with over 40 watercolors, drawings and prints by Adrian Ludwig Richter, as well as the drawing collection of the US collector Walter Bareiss. In autumn 2008, the collection of the lawyer Johann Nepomuk Seiler, a collection of drawings and prints that had not been accessible to the public for more than 120 years, was consigned.

Old Masters

Copper engravings, etchings and woodcuts by artists such as Albrecht Dürer , Martin Schongauer , Albrecht Altdorfer and Rembrandt van Rijn have been auctioned in recent years. The offer includes complete print series, e.g. B. Dürer's “Little Woodcut Passion ” or “ Marienleben”, as well as single sheets in prints, such as the engravings “ Melancolia I ” or “Hieronymus in the case”. Copper engravings by Martin Schongauer will also be auctioned. A separate auction catalog for prints from the Old Masters and the 19th century has been published since 2017. Another focus of the department is the drawings of old masters. In this area, sheets by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo , Jusepe de Ribera and Claude Lorrain were sold. Recently, the department was able to identify a predella plaque that was submitted as an anonymous work as a commissioned work by Fillipino Lippi for the church of San Donato near Florence.

Special auctions

In addition to the normal auctions, Karl & Faber auctions entire collections at special auctions.

  • Annually in November: PIN.Party: charity auction for the benefit of the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich
  • 2018: Charm of the Line - Preuss Collection
  • 2017: Newly discovered drawings by the Dandini family of artists (Part II)
  • 2016: Wilhelm Busch. The painter
  • 2016: Newly discovered drawings by Pompeo Batoni and the Dandini family of artists (Part I)
  • 2016: Space Oddity - NASA photographs
  • 2015: Prints of German Expressionism with works from the Ahlers Collection
  • 2009: Johann Nepomuk Seiler Collection - 19th century prints
  • 2007: Works on paper from the 18th and 19th centuries
  • 2005: Works on paper from the 18th to 20th centuries

Sales exhibitions and other events

Every year Karl & Faber organizes sales exhibitions of modern and contemporary works. Every three years, the winners' exhibition of the Karl & Faber Prize of the Munich Art Academy Foundation takes place in the auction rooms.

In addition to special auctions and sales exhibitions, Karl & Faber organizes collector dinners, talks and symposia. Topics such as the Cultural Property Protection Act , the role of women in art, or the digitization of art are dealt with.

  • 2018: What is art worth? Talk in cooperation with the Fine Art Group with Philip Hoffman, Prof. Dr. Peter Raue, Thaddaeus Ropac and Dr. Rupert Keim
  • 2018: New Year's reception and conversation with Mimi Dusselier and Bernard Soens
  • 2017: Preview & conversation with Leiko Ikemura in the Hetjens Museum Düsseldorf
  • 2017: Evening with Catherine Lampert (art historian, curator and model of Frank Auerbach )
  • 2016: The Cultural Property Protection Act - a determination of position
  • 2016: Women in Art - Status Quo and Perspectives

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Auction houses: largest in Germany by sales volume in the first half of 2015 | Statistics. Retrieved May 16, 2018 .
  2. ^ Artnet: Market Report . January 2019.
  3. ^ Locations - Karl & Faber . In: Karl & Faber . ( karlundfaber.de [accessed on May 28, 2018]).
  4. ↑ Girl with a cat - Karl & Faber . In: Karl & Faber . ( karlundfaber.de [accessed on May 16, 2018]).
  5. ↑ Auction house: Who cashed? In: ZEIT ONLINE . ( zeit.de [accessed on May 16, 2018]).
  6. ↑ Brita Sachs: Auctions at Karl & Faber: Malerstamm-Kurt at the crime scene . In: FAZ.NET . June 9, 2015, ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed May 16, 2018]).
  7. ^ Brita Sachs: Results Karl & Faber: Dungeons can be expensive . In: FAZ.NET . July 13, 2017, ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed May 16, 2018]).
  8. ^ Spitzweg to Campendonk - WELTKUNST, the art magazine of ZEIT . In: WELTKUNST, the art magazine of ZEIT . May 18, 2017 ( weltkunst.de [accessed May 15, 2018]).
  9. ^ Art auctions: Rembrandt for 600 euros? In: ZEIT ONLINE . ( zeit.de [accessed on May 16, 2018]).
  10. ^ Brita Sachs: Karl & Faber auction: Oranges in tissue paper . In: FAZ.NET . November 6, 2017, ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed May 16, 2018]).

10. What is art worth ?: In Exchange, Journal 2019 by KARL & FABER , pp. 54–63.