Dämmernde Stadt was purchased in 1928 by Elsa Koditschek, a young Jewish widow living in Vienna. During the course of her harrowing persecution by the Nazis following the annexation of Austria in 1938, the work was forcibly sold in payment of alleged debts to the very person who helped Elsa survive. Sotheby's will present the work this November through a private restitution agreement between the present owners and Elsa’s heirs. Separate release available

Among the finest examples by their respective artists ever to appear at auction, Oskar Kokoschka’s portrait of Joseph de Montesquiou-Fezensac from 1910 (estimate $15/20 million) and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s compelling Das Soldatenbad (Artillerymen) from 1915 (estimate $15/20 million) both encapsulate the seismic shifts occurring in the visual arts during the period leading up to and including the onset of World War I.

In addition to their inherent art historical significance, both paintings are distinguished by their illustrious provenance and remarkable stories of restitution to the heirs of art-world luminary Alfred Flechtheim – the German collector, art dealer, publisher, patron and bon vivant. Prior to its voluntary restitution earlier this year, Kirchner’s Das Soldatenbad had resided in the distinguished collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York for three decades, and in The Museum of Modern Art prior to that. Like the Kirchner, Kokoschka’s Joseph de Montesquiou-Fezensac was voluntarily returned to Flechtheim’s heirs in 2018 by the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. As in the past, the Flechtheim heirs are expecting to use some of the proceeds for charitable causes, and for Holocaust remembrance and education purposes. Separate release available

THE MOST IMPORTANT WORK OF AMERICAN MODERN ART EVER TO APPEAR AT AUCTION
Marsden Hartley’s triumphant Pre-War Pageant stands as a seminal painting in the development of Modern art, and represents one of the first examples of an American artist working in a purely abstract idiom (estimate in the region of $30 million). The canvas hails from a groundbreaking group of paintings that Hartley produced in Berlin between 1913 and 1915 – the majority of which reside in museum collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Coming to auction this November from the collection of Ed and Deborah Shein, this magnificent painting headlined an exhibition of American Modernist works from their collection at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. in 2010. Separate release available

THE TRIUMPH OF COLOR: IMPORTANT WORKS FROM A PRIVATE EUROPEAN COLLECTION
Put together primarily in the 1970s and 80s, the present collection today represents one of the finest assemblages of post-Impressionist and Modern Art in private hands. The collection is defined by three superb masterworks by Wassily Kandinsky and rare works by the key protagonists of Fauvism and German Expressionism. Several of the paintings were loaned to the Courtauld Institute of Art in London for over 15 years, where they provided a unique display of works from the Fauve movement, the Expressionists and the route to Abstraction in the early-20th century.

The three major paintings by Wassily Kandinsky chart the artist’s development across four decades from the earliest successes to his greatest later achievements. The group is led by one of the last 1913 oil paintings left in private hands, Zum Thema Jüngstes Gericht (On the Theme of the Last Judgment), a unique composition from this prime year of Kandinsky’s career during which he reached the summit of his path to Abstraction (estimate $22/35 million). An early abstract masterpiece, Improvisation auf Mahagoni (Improvisation on Mahogany), was painted in 1910 during the artist’s Murnau period (estimate $15/20 million). A stunning composition from the artist’s Paris period, painted in 1939, Le Rond rouge (The Red Circle) is an exceptional large-format oil on canvas dating from the exhilarating years he spent in France (estimate $18/25 million).

The core of the collection has always been works by the Fauves, including three outstanding canvases by Maurice de Vlaminck. Paysage au bois mort (Landscape with Dead Wood) (estimate $12/18 million), Pêcheur à Chatou (Fisherman at Chatou) (estimate $9/14 million) and Nu couché (Reclining Nude) (estimate $2/3 million) represent the full spectrum of Vlaminck’s masterpieces. Executed in 1905 and 1906 at the height of the Fauve movement, the three works boast remarkable, thickly-painted surfaces and vivid palettes. Further highlights include exceptional works by some of the key artists of the German Expressionist movement, including Alexej von Jawlensky, Max Pechstein, August Macke and Heinrich Campendonk. Separate release available