Gesine Borcherdt: What has been Grisebach’s greatest success in contemporary art?

Daniel von Schacky: Without a doubt, the Schönebeck painting. We achieved a new world record price for Eugen Schönebeck – a large nude painting featuring a bird (“Figure with Bird I”), created in the early 1960s, which had been held in a private collection for four decades. We had estimated its value at around 150,000 euros. In the end, it sold for 645,000 euros. What makes us particularly happy is that it went to an American museum.

GB: That’s many times the estimated value. What’s the story behind it?

DvS: Schönebeck is a name many people don’t know – and there’s a simple reason for that: He created only 52 paintings, then stopped and became a mail carrier in 1967, at the age of just thirty. But these works, which he produced in such a short period, are in no way inferior to Baselitz’s early works. The close exchange between the two during this time is significant in art history. That’s exactly what sets Grisebach apart: We recognize quality, even if the market hasn’t priced it in yet. And the right collectors, the right museums, sense that immediately.

GB: But you’ve also sold international works very successfully.

Irene Sieberger: Absolutely. In the same auction where we sold the Schönebeck, we also had a large Antony Gormley sculpture – 1.6 metric tons of cast iron, which had been standing in a garden. It was estimated at 250,000; four bidders fought over it – in the end, a European collection outside Germany snapped it up for nearly 600,000. This example shows: When a Gormley is offered in London, it’s one of many. In Germany, it’s a rarity. And thanks to his connections to Wuppertal, to the Ropac Gallery, and to the European art scene in general, Gormley enjoys a completely different level of visibility here. Added to that is the practical consideration: The sculpture was already in Germany, so it didn’t have to be flown in. With a weight of nearly two metric tons, that’s no small matter. We also set the world record for Per Kirkeby last year at over 570,000 euros. And in the last auction, we set a world record for Shota Nakamura, a Japanese artist working in Berlin. Almost all the bidders came from abroad, as did the work itself. It sold for 64,000 euros, with an estimate of 10,000.

DvS: And these successes mean that we’ll be offering one of the potentially most expensive international lots in Germany in recent years at our fall auction: a significant work by Yves Klein.

GB: What about young, installation-based, digital art? It hardly appears in your catalogs.

IS: There are structural reasons for that. We’re an auction house – we sell works that people can hang or display in their apartments and homes. The number of people willing to buy a painting is simply much larger than the number who want a video work or a large-scale installation. And when we want to sell a complex installation, the buyer is almost always a museum. The problem: Museums have lengthy decision-making processes – and there are only five weeks between the catalog’s publication and auction night. That’s too short a timeframe for institutional purchasing decisions.

DvS: But we’ve certainly had bolder pieces before, such as a large-scale Sterling Ruby installation or a very explicit sculpture by the Chapman Brothers that was exhibited at the Turner Prize exhibition at the Tate Gallery. And there are buyers for those. Sometimes it even surprises us. But it remains the exception.

GB: What about hype, like there used to be around young artists who sold for six-figure sums?

DvS: We’ve deliberately stayed out of that. We know how that game ends. Unknown artists who are suddenly valued at 10,000 and sell for 300,000 end up at 12,000 two years later. The buyer who paid 300,000—because we offered it to him – eventually calls us. Those aren’t pleasant conversations. And putting a relationship like that at risk for a short-lived speculation – it’s not worth it.

IS: Nor is it worth it for the artist, by the way: A good market value builds up slowly, through the gallery, museum exhibitions, and consistent representation. When it skyrockets, the artist has to keep producing the same thing over and over again because the gallery can sell it. That’s simply unhealthy for artistic development.

GB: Who are your new buyers?

IS: Mostly people between the ages of forty and sixty: self-made entrepreneurs, many of whom come from the startup scene and are now starting to buy art. It’s striking how much the proportion of women as independent collectors has increased. For a Cindy Sherman work, for example, a foreign collector who bids on it is someone who deliberately buys only female artists and dedicates her collection to the history of women’s art in the 20th century. That’s a formalized, serious approach – not a trend, but a stance.

GB: What’s the difference between a buyer and a collector?

DvS: A buyer purchases works because they love them and want them in their life. Eventually, their home is full, and they’re happy. A collector, on the other hand, buys with a common thread, a theme, a goal. They go to Art Basel with a list in mind: that gallery, those artists, that direction. This isn’t a value judgment – the buyer loves their works just as much. But the collector has a mission.

GB: And investors?

DvS: They exist, but they’re rarely truly consistent at either end of the spectrum. Most fall somewhere in the middle. And here’s the interesting thing: The collectors who have been most financially successful have always bought with their eyes, never with their ears. They loved a work, held onto it for sixty years – and over that time, everything has changed. What makes a work truly valuable is its rarity: that it was part of the family, hung above the fireplace, and is now being shown to the public again for the first time.