Cologne auction house Lempertz has announced plans to auction a self-portrait by Max Pechstein in the fall after it withdrew the work from its June 6 evening sale, following press reports according to which the painting was allegedly sold under duress by a Jewish doctor who died in Spain while fleeing. Nazi Germany.
Self-portrait with a pipe (1909) had been the star of the auction with an estimated price between 1.5 and 2 million euros. Described by Lempertz as a “key work of expressionism”, it depicts the painter in vibrant colors, a pipe in his mouth, holding a brush and looking directly at the viewer. Pechstein had recently achieved his first successes in the art market and later said of this time that “the ice was broken” and his art had been “set in its path”.
In his auction preview, Lempertz said the portrait had been in the same private collection in the Rhineland for around 90 years and was “fresh on the market”.
He did not mention that the work had previously belonged to Walter Blank of Cologne, who sold it in 1936. Three years into Adolf Hitler’s reign, Jews in Germany faced increasing persecution, including including professional bans that deprived them of income and forced them to sell. goods to pay their bills or finance their flight abroad. Blank’s two sons survived the Dachau and Auschwitz concentration camps.
According to Lempertz, the painting was registered on lostart.de, a German database of Nazi-looted art, on the day of the planned sale, “even though a settlement had already been agreed with the heirs.” But one of the two heirs was unhappy with the proposed deal, said Rainer Jacobs, the Düsseldorf-based lawyer representing Lempertz, and re-entered the work into the database. The daily Suddeutsche Zeitung the newspaper reported on the portrait’s provenance on June 5, the day before the sale.
“Confusing press reports have created uncertainty,” Jan Bykowski, a spokesman for Lempertz, said in a statement. In its June 12 press release, the auction house said the listing of lostart.de “unnecessarily unsettled some bidders who had expressed interest, including a museum.”
Jacobs says that since then, the two heirs have signed a new settlement, paving the way for the fall auction.
