Munich, 5 February 2009 (kk+q) – Auction houses Ketterer Kunst and Quittenbaum are taking the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus by Walter Gropius as an occasion to hold a joint auction, a first for both. The venue for the joint auction on 20 June 2009 will be the new Ketterer Kunst House for Art, directly at the Munich fairgrounds.
Each of the auction houses held highly successful themed Bauhaus auctions of their own on the 80th and on the 85th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus. So it makes sense to join forces and take advantage of the synergy bonus to be had from combining expertise, marketing and logistics.
The two hosts, who belong to the same generation, are looking forward to the joint auction project: “Two Munich auction houses collaborating is something new indeed and makes sense not just for us,” thus Askan Quittenbaum. And Robert Ketterer adds: “Our clientele especially will benefit from this joint event because collaboration will make the auction multifaceted.”
The range of the special auction encompasses the applied and fine arts. Consignments are now welcome: whereas Ketterer Kunst will handle paintings, works on paper and sculpture, Quittenbaum is responsible for furnishings, design and art objects. The catalogue on the approx. 150 lots will be available in Germany for € 25 (Europe + € 5, rest of the world + € 10). Experiments with form and colour, glass-making and metalworking, commercial art, photography,cabinet-making and ceramics were on the curriculum of the school founded by Walter Gropius in 1919. Painters and sculptors, including Johannes Itten, Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee and Oskar Schlemmer made the revolutionary institution famous and so did exponents of the applied arts such as Wilhelm Wagenfeld and Marcel Breuer, with the objectively functional furniture they designed featuring the new materials tubular steel and industrial glass. “Art and technology – a new unity” – that was the title of the large-scale exhibition the Bauhaus staged in 1923. The unity of fine art, the applied arts and industry – that was pivotal to the thinking of the creative visionaries who set trends by going new ways in design in Weimar and later in Dessau. The Bauhaus spirit would live on in subsequent institutions based on it, such as Black Mountain College, the New Bauhaus and the Hochschule fШr Gestaltung in Ulm. Many orks designed in the Bauhaus era are today icons of German design and an integral part of everyday living.
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