Modern | Post War | Contemporary | Galerie Thomas | The Jagdfeld Collection | Live bidding | 03.12.2025 | Preview: 28.11.2025 - 01.12.2025

Modern
The Lying Cow with Raised Head by German sculptor Ewald Mataré is considered a rediscovery (estimate: €80,000–120,000). Mataré made this characteristic work from amaranth wood around 1925. In the 1920s Mataré used wood – a material he felt was honest and direct – in order to express the original power of form. The material allowed him to achieve clarity and simplification – qualities that mark his entire oeuvre. For a long time the Mataré experts did not know the work’s whereabouts. After 80 years in an American private collection, the Lying Cow has now resurfaced.

Masks are a recurrent motif in the oeuvre of Jewish artist Felix Nussbaum. He was persecuted during the Nazi era, lived in hiding and in 1944 was murdered in Auschwitz. He created the Still Life with Mask and Sweater in 1935 during his time in exile (estimate: €100,000–150,000). Here, too, the mask is more than a mere prop – it is a powerful symbol of his own situation as a persecuted artist who had to be in hiding as he feared for his life by being exposed as a Jew. 

Post War
Josef Albers’s series Homage to the Square, which he created from 1950 until his death in 1976, forms the centrepiece of his oeuvre. After decades of experimental work at the Bauhaus and in the U.S., Albers kept returning to the square in this series of works. The maximally reduced shape allowed him to systematically explore the relativity and perception of colour. In 1969 he produced a study in the – for a preparatory work – unusually large size of 81 x 81 cm for the painting Morning Sight from the Homage to the Square series (estimate: €300,000–500,000). 

Another work that is impressive in terms of size is Chromatic Constellation by Heinz Mack from 2010, in which the Zero artist also explores the square and, especially, colour (estimate: €120,000–180,000). It measures 130 x 159.5 cm and is the equivalent of Mack’s earlier light experiments in the form of a painting. Where his mirror objects capture the real, physical light, the constellations achieve an illusionary, immaterial light effect solely by way of colour.

The painting Beautiful Lady from 1984 is by the grand master of Pop Art (estimate: €300,000–500,000). Andy Warhol personally asked the sitter to paint her and gave the work its title. The work was part of a German private collection since the 1980s and is now being offered on the market for the first time. It is an extraordinarily beautiful and charismatic portrait of a woman. 

The works of a private collection in the Rhineland was shown to great success at the opening of Van Ham’s new Berlin office and during the Berlin Art Week. Containing early works by Wolfgang Tillmans, Andreas Gursky and Thomas Ruff, it reflects the spirit of the 1980s and ’90s, when the collection was assembled in collaboration with influential gallery owners in the Rhineland. 

Contemporary
Karin Kneffel is known for her hyper-realistic paintings in which she tends to use everyday motifs to enrich them with enigmatic elements. Her work Grid from 1997 comes from a corporate collection (estimate: €120,000–180,000). With the grid in the foreground Kneffel creates a layer behind it which to the viewer appears to be both out of reach and at the same time surreal. The result is a play of illusion and confusion which Kneffel masters perfectly.

The work Camp Forestia by Scottish artist Peter Doig, whose paintings are rarely offered on the German auction market, comes from the corporate collection of Bremer Landesbank (estimate: €400,000–600,000). The painting combines the elements that are characteristic of Doig’s oeuvre. With the house and its reflection in the water he uses recurring symbols, creating a mysterious atmosphere that is typical of his work by making everything blurry and applying scratched paint.