The auction evening at Grisebach in Berlin dragged on because the bids had already been courting other works, such as the one by Edouard Gaertner, for so long. Then it was the turn of lot number 19: Self-Portrait Yellow-Pink, painted by Max Beckmann, 1943 in Amsterdam. The painting, unusually friendly for the artist, registered an estimate of 20 to 30 million euros. In the end, it reached 23.2 million (plus buyer's premium), breaking the expected record: the highest result for an art auction in Germany.
Beckmann once gave the painting to his wife, who kept it until her death in 1986. Then it was in a Swiss private collection, after last night it will move to another one, also in Switzerland. Max Beckmann (1884-1950) is one of the most famous German painters. With his expressive, figurative style, he is one of the leading artists of modernism. In 2017, his painting Hell of the Birds (1937/38) fetched 36 million British pounds at a Christie's auction in London.
