PHOTO AUCTION PREVIEW
18.–24.05.2019
DAILY 2–6 PM

19TH WESTLICHT PHOTO AUCTION
FRIDAY, 24.05.2019, 5 PM

An extremely rare – and thus sensational – personal document testifying to Gustav Klimt’s relation to one of his models will be on offer at the 19th WestLicht Photo Auction: »Frau Johanna Staude, zur Erinnerung von Gustav Klimt« (Mrs. Johanna Staude, as a memory, from Gustav Klimt). It is with these words the famed painter dedicated his portrait photo to his model. The picture was taken during a sitting with photographer Moriz Nähr in 1917, in the year before Klimt’s death.

Klimt’s portrait of Johanna Staude, which remained unfinished, is today in the collection of the Beldvedere. The poet Peter Altenberg later called Staude a »modern angel«, and himself bestowed a photo upon her - »my holy friend and carer Johanna Staude«. This vintage print with handwritten dedication was made by the young Trude Fleischmann who at the time was still an intern in the studio of Hermann Schieberth at Kaiser Karl Ring 11, the latter-day Opernring.

In addition to these spectacular Austrian rarities there are grand examples of international photo art in the selection of the Auction. With »Konstrukce«, a detail from the Eiffel Tower from 1928, Jaroslav Rössler created one of his most distinctive and advanced photographs.

Among the further icons from photo history: »Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima«, taken in 1945 by US war photographer Joe Rosenthal, Gordon Parks’s famous »American Gothic«, 1946, »Mrs. Eveleigh Nash at the Buckingham Palace Mall« by Inge Morath, 1953, or W. Eugene Smith’s deeply moving picture »Tomoko Uemura in her Bath«, which made history as the »pietà of the industrial age«.

Ernst Haas, Austrian colleague of W. Eugene Smith and Inge Morath at agency Magnum Photos is represented with a dazzling chromogenic print of a »Swimmer«, Greece 1970.

Remarkable items also among the photobooks: three very rare original first editions of »PROVOKE«, signed by photographers Daido Moriyama, Takuma Nakahira and Yutaka Takanashi, are coming up for auction. The legendary magazine, as controversial as it was influential, was self-published between 1968 and 1969 and discontinued after only three numbers. It presented photographs, essays and poems and is today a sought-after collectible.

More rare first edition will go under the hammer with August Sander’s »Antlitz der Zeit«, Munich 1929 and Alexey Brodovitch’s «Ballet», New York 1945, among others.