The Golden Twenties: Berlin through the Eyes of Modern Artists – CHristie´s Online Auction

London – The Golden Twenties: Berlin through the Eyes of Modern Artists, an online – only sale, live for bidding from 22 October to 12 November, showcas es 27 works on paper and prints created by artists that spans from the early 1900s through to the 1960s.

Featured artists include Otto Dix, George Grosz, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Jeanne Mammen, an artist who until recently, was largely unknown outside of Germany, and Heinrich Zille. The sale is highlighted by a group of eight watercolours by Mammen that range from £7,000 – 5 0,000 and Die guten Jahre ( circa 1920, estimate: £160,000 – 210,000 , illustrated above, left ) by George Grosz.

GEORGE GROSZ (1893-1959) Die guten Jahre
Signed ‘GROSZ’ (lower right) watercolour, reed pen and pen and ink
on card 19 3⁄8 x 15 7⁄8 in. (49 x 40.2 cm.) ©Christie´s Images LTD 2020

During the early 1920s George Grosz began to step away from the more provocative, politically charged subjects that had dominated his work in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, and instead trained his eye on the lives of ordinary people, capturing the banality, hypocrisies and darkness that often lay behind the facade of polite society. In Die guten Jahre the artist takes aim at the amorous liaisons of amiddle – aged couple. Capturing the dynamic between the two characters, Grosz slyly emphasises that “The Good Years” suggested by the title have passed the couple by.

Jeanne Mammen’s artistic intent was similarly to chronicle the febrile world of Weimar Germany with a vivid clarity. From 1919 until 1933, she documented the profound social changes brought about by the First World War in Berlin life. By the late 1920s, Mammen was gaining recognition for her watercolours reflecting the cold hedonism of the Weimar Republic from a female perspective. In Bierseidelbetrachtung II (1929, estimate: £50,000 – 70,000 , illustrated below ), two men leer at the bar as an overworked waitress in tight heels distains their predatory gaze, while girls gripped firm by drunken men gaze coldly out Kaschemme (1929, estimate: £50,000 – 70,000 , illustrated above) .