Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's painting, Tanz im Varieté, has resurfaced at a Ketterer Kunst auction after an 80-year disappearance, and sold for nearly 6, 960, 000 Euros-more than twice its projected price of 2, 000, 000 Euros.
Kirchner was one of the founders of Die Brücke-an artist group that helped lay the foundations for expressionism. His works were labelled degenerate by the Nazis, and Kirchner was further incriminated in their eyes by the fact that many of his patrons were Jewish.
Until last June 7, when it suddenly reappeared at auction, Tanz im Varieté was known only from black and white photographs.
The painting's subject is standard Kirchner: it depicts two main figures, a white woman and a black man, dancing a cakewalk among a crowd. It dates from 1911, and was displayed at a Brücke exhibition in Berlin the following year, and then again in 1923. Afterwards, it came into the possession of Max Glaeser, who owned another Kirchner painting, Frühlingslandschaft. After his death, it was inherited by his wife, Anna, who sold it to a jeweler in 1944. To protect the painting from the Nazis, and from Allied bombing, Kirchner's painting was hidden in a crate, which was then sent to a farm in the German countryside. When the French retook the village in 1945, the crate was forced open, and the painting took a bullet to the head of one of the female dancers, and a bayonet to the male dancer's torso. The painting was later restored, although both wounds remain visible on the reverse side.
Kirchner's original frame has also been lost. With his frames as much a part of his paintings as the painting itself, Ketterer Kunst commissioned Werner Murrer Rahmen to create a simple frame-often used by Brücke artists-based on photos of Tanz im Varieté.
In 1980, the collector gave the painting to his two children, who put it up for auction.
"Now it is back," said Dr. Agnes Thum of Ketterer Kunst. "Tanz im Varieté can finally take its rightful place in art history."
