BERLIN- Villa Grisebach’s spring auctions in Berlin begins, May 26, 2011, with the 190-lot auction of modern and contemporary photography.

Two photo albums from a Swiss private collection are auctioned that include, among other photographs, rare images of Bauhaus artist Oskar Schlemmer and his family, taken by Kurt Bryner. Contact prints and portraits (signed by Schlemmer and others appearing in the photos) show the artist, his wife Tut and his children Jaina, Karin, and Tilman during their 1937–1940 stay in Badenweiler in Southern Germany (€25,000/30,000).

The famous “Mainbocher Corset” by Horst P. Horst (€10,000/15,000) counts among the masterworks of the history of photography, as well as George Hoyningen-Huene’s classical “Divers, Paris” (a print originally from the collection of Horst P. Horst) (€8,000/12,000), Berenice Abbott’s “New York at Night” (€7,000/9,000), André Kertész’s “Melancholic Tulip” (€4,000/6,000), Andreas Feininger’s “Empire State Building seen from New Jersey” (€3,000/4,000) or Leni Riefenstahl’s “Glenn Morris” (Diskuswerfer) (€3,000/5,000). Especially rare are vintage prints by Helmar Lerski from two private collections, one is an extremely rare “Selbstportrait” (€4,000/6,000), a “Junger Bettler” from the series “Köpfe des Alltags” (€3,000 /5,000) as well as partly hand-coloured works from Lerski’s early years in the U.S.A. More highlights of modern photography are René Burri’s “Ché Guevara” in an unusual large format (€15,000/18,000), Erwin Blumenfeld’s “Selbstportrait mit Maske” (€9,000/11,000), Arnold Newman’s portrait „Jackson Pollock, Springs, Long Island” (€4,000/6,000) as well as works by David Bailey, Aenne Biermann, Mario Giacomelli, Germaine Krull, Michael Ruetz, Else Thalemann, Herbert Tobias and others.

The contemporary section of the sale begins with Bernd and Hilla Becher’s nine-part work “Fördertürme, Schuylkill County, PA, USA” (€20,000/30,000). Other top lots in this section include Valie Export’s “Konfiguration mit schwarzer Hand” (€8,000/12,000), Peter Lindbergh’s “Kristen Mc.Menamy” from the 1996 Pirelli calendar (€12,000/14,000), Sarah Moon’s color pigment print “Jean-Paul Gaultier (Indépendant)” (€5,000/7,000) and Hiroshi Sugimoto’s “Tri City Drive-In, San Bernardino” (€20,000/30,000) as well as works by Helmut Newton, Martin Parr, Bettina Rheims, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth, Miroslav Tichy, Wolfgang Tillmans, and others.