MUNICH.- Ketterer Kunst's auction on June 6/7 sets new standards in the German art market, featuring an unprecedented selection of international masterpieces.

Over the past few years, the auction house has made considerable efforts to raise its profile in the international art world. The upcoming auction features exquisite works by artists such as Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, Morris Louis, and Claes Oldenburg.


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With a strong market position as the leading auction house in Modern Art, particularly German Expressionism, still forming a cornerstone of the business, the Contemporary Art segment enjoys steady growth and has reached comparable volumes. Contrary to the major auction houses, Ketterer Kunst clearly emphasizes specialization. Every year, we host two well-curated auctions featuring a select range of high-quality works. The auction house's clients benefit from a team of experts across all departments, from acquisition and cataloging to provenance research and logistics.

Ketterer Kunst also introduces a novelty: For the first time this June, it will host its Day Sale in a crossover format in addition to the Evening Sale. This allows the auction house to cater to customers increasingly interested in purchasing works across categories.

Select highlights from the Evening Sale on June 6, 2025:

With the expressive “Kopf in Bronzefarben – Bildnis Sacharoff“ from 1913, Alexej von Jawlensky created one of his most noteworthy portraits – an impressive testimony to a period of upheaval, a time when works such as Marc's “Tower of Blue Horses” and Kirchner's street scenes were created. The rare portrait of the legendary dancer Alexander Sacharoff is part of a small group of just two expressionist heads Jawlensky painted of the same model. Estimate price: €1,500,000–2,500,000.

Gerhard Richter's “Abstraktes Bild” (Abstract Painting, 1989) dates from his most seminal creative period (1986–1990), when the squeegee became his central painterly gesture. As a direct sequel to the iconic RAF Cycle (MoMA, New York), the work boasts a vibrant vernal color scheme that distills calculation and chance, stratification, and transparency into a dynamic interplay. Richter described this group of works as the most mature of his abstract paintings. Estimate price: €1,500,000 2,500,000.

Edvard Munch's “The Red House (Det røde hus)” (1926) is one of the most striking landscape visions from his late creative period. Painted on his estate Ekely outside Oslo, the work shows an outbuilding of his farm in the middle of the vast Nordic landscape, which Munch stylized as a metaphor for his inner world. The first Munch painting to ever appear on the German auction market (source: artprice.com), it is an absolute rarity and a masterpiece of expressive landscape painting. It became part of the noteworthy Max Glaeser Collection of expressionist art (from which we recently sold Kirchner's “Tanz im Varieté”) in 1927/28. Estimated price: €1,200,000-1,800,000.

“Addition VII“ (1959) is a monumental masterpiece by Morris Louis, one of the leading representatives of American Color Field Painting. In this composition, Louis pushed his characteristic “Veil Paintings” to new painterly realms: the paint is no longer applied but poured to let it flow across the canvas—a rhythmic act of gravity and control. Of the eight monumental paintings in the “Addition” series, six are owned by international museum collections today. Estimate price: €800,000–1,200,000.

In the large-format paperwork “Le Sculpteur et son Modèle“ (1933), the one- of-a kind artist merges art with desire, myth with his biography: the intimate scene, inspired by the Pygmalion iconography shows Pablo Picasso as a faun in conversation with his muse Marie-Thérèse Walter. The theme of “artist and model” permeates Picasso's entire oeuvre, however, rarely in such intimate and potent form. Estimate price: €800,000–1,200,000.

“Peinture 130 x 102 cm, 18 janvier 2011” is a remarkable example of Pierre Soulages' celebrated ‘Outrenoir’ works. In this “beyond black” painting technique, color becomes the motif and, in interaction with light, the sole content of the image. The artist's works are treasured worldwide and can be found in internationally renowned museum collections from Europe to Asia to the USA. Estimate price: €700,000–900,000.

The depiction of the Steinbrücke (Stone Bridge) in Oberweimar is a central motif in Lyonel Feininger's oeuvre. His oil painting “Auf der Brücke” (On the Bridge, 1913) is a prime example of his change of style from figurative painting to geometric-cubist works. In a letter, the artist described this phase as the beginning of his “first mature artistic phase.” Feininger's figurative paintings from the early 1910s are among his most sought-after works on the international auction market (source: artprice). Recently, the painting has been on display in several museum shows. Estimate price: €600,000–800,000.

Claes Oldenburg, a pop art legend, is known for his famous “Giant Objects”: giant everyday objects made to poke fun at the relationship between consumerism, culture, and sculpture. These pieces are scarce on the international auction market. The more than three-meter tall collaboration by Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen, “Leaning Fork with Meatball & Spaghetti III” (1994), is one of only three versions each of unique character— of which Part I featured in the major 1995 Oldenburg retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The work pays homage to New York's culinary diversity and visual exuberance through its ironic hyperbole of everyday objects like forks, meatballs, and spaghetti. Estimate: €600,000– 800,000.

In “Lampe et Balance I” (1964), Jean Dubuffet transforms everyday objects into a vibrant web of colors and shapes. Inspired by doodles made while talking on the phone, he uses red, blue, and black paint to dissolve familiar shapes into a biomorphic puzzle—a typical masterpiece from his “L'Hourloupe” cycle, which constitutes the core of his work from 1962 to 1974. Estimate price: €500,000-700,000.

Sigmar Polke created his early signature piece, “Kallablüten,” in 1965. The painted grid pattern would become his artistic trademark. The three-part flower motif originated in Polke's early years in Düsseldorf, today considered his oeuvre's most sought-after period. Additionally, it boasts an excellent provenance. Sold by Galerie Fred Jahn in Munich, the work entered the Deutsche Bank Collection. Polke's grid paintings are considered an absolute rarity on the auction market. Estimate: €400,000–600,000.

With “Gouged Girl” (2008), Dana Schutz presents a powerful, visually and psychologically charged composition from her acclaimed “Self Eaters” series. The large-format canvas exemplifies Schutz's unmistakable visual language: figurative, expressive, narrative, and disturbing, somewhere between dream, myth, and social commentary. Since participating in the Whitney Biennial in 2017, the New York artist has been one of the most sought-after figures in contemporary figurative painting. Works like this fetch top prices and can be found in renowned institutions worldwide. Estimate price: €350,000–450,000.

With his imposing, over two-metre tall bronze sculpture “Porta Italica” (1997), Igor Mitoraj explores the theme of ancient ideals of beauty, while also highlighting the fragility of human existence. Mitoraj's fragmented figures, which adorn public spaces around the world, became his artistic trademark. Another copy of this work can be found in the Parc Olympique in Lausanne. Estimate price: €300,000–400,000.

The array of exceptional works of Contemporary Art includes pieces by Thomas Bayrle, Georg Base- litz, Louise Bourgeois, Tony Cragg, Katharina Grosse, Keith Haring, Imi Knoebel, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Franz West, and Tom Wesselmann. The Modern Art selection is completed by works by artists such as Max Liebermann, Dorothea Maet- zel-Johannsen, Emil Nolde, Hermann Max Pechstein, Karl Schmidt Rottluff, and Marianne von Werefkin.


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