COLOGNE.- The highlight of the autumn season at Lempertz is the auction of works from one of the world's most important photography collections: Miami-based businessman and philanthropist Martin Z. Margulies is selling off parts of his holdings. With a total of 154 lots (over 300 photographs), these make up the largest portion of the photography auction.
Starting with the Düsseldorf School of Photography, prominently represented here by multi-part works by Bernd and Hilla Becher (lot 704, €30/€40,000) and Thomas Struth (lots 705-708, from €10,000 to €15,000), the collector's attention turned early to their artistic form related precursors in the 1920s, in particular the photography of New Objectivity in the Weimar Republic. This search for traces of photographic history resulted in extensive acquisitions of outstanding vintage prints by Albert Renger-Patzsch, August Sander, Hugo Schmölz and Werner Mantz – supplemented by forays into post-war German photography, including works by Peter Keetman and Ruth Hallensleben, up to the 1980s, of which the groups of works by Wilhelm Schürmann are exemplary examples (lot 677/678, €2,500/3,000 and €3/4,000 respectively).
With an aesthetically trained eye and a keen interest in social issues, the collector returned his attentions from Germany to the United States in the 1930s. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policy aimed to support the rural population of the United States, which had been impoverished by drought, industrialisation and the global economic crisis. This period of mass unemployment and social deprivation has remained etched in our visual memory primarily through the documentary photographs of the Farm Security Administration (FSA), which produced numerous iconic images of this time: Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, Marion Post Wolcott, Walker Evans and Russell Lee are considered the leading representatives of this movement. The auction dedicates a separate chapter to FSA photography under the heading 'The Bitter Years' (lots 547-565, from €1/1,500 to €6/8,000).
In keeping with the leitmotif of the conditio humana, the overarching theme of the Margulies Collection, the more recent acquisitions are also worth mentioning, especially those by photographers who, under the label New Topographic Movement, focus on the social and architectural environment in suburban areas of the USA: Robert Adams (lots 673-676, from €4/5,000 to €5/6,000), Stephen Shore (lots 700-703, from €2/3,000 to €6/8,000) and William Eggleston (lots 698/699, €5/6,000 each).
Multi-part groups of works such as Olafur Eliasson's 'Hut Series' (lot 722, €30/40,000), Henry Wessel's 'Real Estate Photographs' (lot 697, €3/4,000) and Peter Bialobrzeski's 'Case Study Homes, Manila' (lot 724, €5/6,000) are devoted to the theme of human habitation. Alec Soth's large-format chromogenic prints reveal the dark side of the American way of life in their characteristic melancholy atmosphere (lots 713-717, from €4/5,000 to €5/6,000). With a profound understanding and respect, South African portrait and documentary photographer Pieter Hugo focuses on marginalised social groups such as the 'hyena men' of Nigeria and waste collectors in Ghana (lots 727/728, €6/8,000 each).
The works in the Margulies Collection are complemented by other significant consignments from various European collections: Highlights include two fine prints by Austrian pictorialist Hans Watzek (lot 500/501,€4/5,000 to 6/8,000), exquisite vintage prints by Man Ray (lot 609, €8/10,000) and Otto Steinert (lot 593, €12/15,000), three platinum palladium prints by Horst P. Horst (lot 605-607, €5/6,000 and €6/8,000 respectively) and gelatin silver prints by Larry Clark (lot 668, €4/5,000) and Francesca Woodman (lot 671, €6/8,000) among others.
