NAKED IN NATURE

The Hanover Gallery Koch sold a sketch book by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - in its individual parts.

Dancing record in the studio, a floral still life with wooden carving, two naked women with Gramophone, figures by a pond and always acts in nature - they are the basic themes of the former artists' community bridge that picks Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in his big black sketchbook again. Late he does: In 1929 dated Gerd Presler, author of the catalog raisonné of sketchbooks Kirchner, the first drawings in the bound copy in black oilcloth. The latest probably date from 1938 - from that fateful year in which Kirchner, morphine addict and deeply distressed by the ostracism of his works in Germany, on 15 June will take my life.

"The fate is not known," Gerd Presler had to write in 1996 in his Catalogue raisonné in which he gave the thick book with the red leaf edges, the number 159th Although it was known that it once was owned by Lise Gujer. The weaver who lived near the home of Kirchner on the wild ground at Davos, the painter had worked since 1921, she wove tapestries from his designs. But when a year after Gujers death with their estate also the sketchbook was sold to lost track of him for decades.

For four decades, this book located in a safe

At least 8,000 Swiss Francs, the 96 contained sketches were estimated in June 1968 in the Bernese Auction Kornfeld and Klipstein - even if Kirchner sketchbooks then still hardly anyone interested. All the more astonishing 14,000 francs finally paid a stranger. Gerd Presler suspects behind the London gallery Marlborough Fine Art In one of their catalogs the sketchbook namely appeared in 1969 on one last time. Then it disappeared for 43 years from the public.

"Kirchner's sketchbook number 159 has four decades in a safe location," is all you can get out of the Hanover gallery Ole-Christian Koch about the source from which the drawing convolute finally came into his hands.

On the Art Cologne Fine Art & Antiques in Cologne, it was in the past week for the first time see public again - not as a sketchbook, however, but rather than 83 individual framed drawings in ink, ink, pencil and chalk (a few contain sketches on front and back). Of course, cooking is really not where he got his Trouvaille. But he said that the Sketchbook neither the Kirchner discount given by the Wichtracher Galerie Henze & Ketterer care, yet the Kirchner Museum was offered in Davos: "Of its 181 received sketchbooks Kirchner thanks their estate 165 in Davos. I do not think it is because even for a 166th would want to get involved. "

Witnesses reported that Kirchner had hardly been a day without drawing materials, and one of those books, which he bought at 13 different dealers in his various homes. "I drew often on a day 50 hands full," he himself described his modus operandi. "It is still not a day goes by without even the pen in activity would come." In 1943, five years after his death, decided Kirchner girlfriend Erna Schilling, set up the new home ground game. When they therefore separated from much also took Lise Gujer numerous individual leaves and convoluted. In the international art market, they found much later - like other parts of the Kirchner estate.

Because Kirchner remained childless, the brother of the painter, the engineer Walter Kirchner inherited in Biberach. About 30,000 works, paintings, drawings and sculptures, created the Expressionist, so the estimate. Thousands of them camped in Davos, where Kirchner had lived since 1917. After the war, but the paintings and etchings, sketches, furniture and sculpture were considered "enemy property" - because Kirchner had retained German citizenship. 1945, his estate was therefore initially brought into the Kunstmuseum Basel, there inventoried and labeled with an official estate stamp. Not until the mid-fifties began to Switzerland to release the work gradually: in 1955 alone, approximately around 340 paintings, 9,000 drawings, and a large number of prints.

Between 2,800 and 20,000 euros will cost a single sheet

Walter Kirchner appointed the first New York gallery owner Curt Valentin with sales. Than on the still very skeptical expressionism U.S. market but achieved only modest prices, was the chance of a German self-made counterparts Roman Norbert Ketterer in Stuttgart. He let himself be used by the heirs of his brother as executor and encamped Kirchner's works in one basement rocks of the Old Castle in Stuttgart. "The heirs had only a vague idea of ​​the large number of paintings, watercolors, drawings, lithographs, woodblocks and wooden carvings left by her uncle in Switzerland, as in 1938 put the gun to his temple," wrote then the mirror. Ketterer's daughter Ingeborg later founded with her brother Gunther and her husband Wolfgang Henze worked up the Galerie Henze & Ketterer in Wichtrach near Berne, which still administers the Kirchner-estate, and leads the work directory.