Nazi-looted Georg Kolbe fountain breaks German artist's auction record

A fountain by German sculptor Georg Kolbe, the Tänzerinnen-Brunnen (Dancer’s Fountain), sold for a record €4 million (with fees) at Villa Grisebach in Berlin on 4 June, breaking the artist’s previous auction record of €1.4 million. The Georg Kolbe Museum deaccessioned the work after a 2024 provenance research project led to restitution to the descendants of its original commissioner, Jewish Berlin collector Heinrich Stahl, about 85 years after Nazi-era looting. Commissioned in 1922, the fountain features a bronze white female dancer supported by three crouching Somali men in limestone; the museum noted the work’s reliance on colonial representational hierarchies. Other notable results in the same auction included Emil Nolde’s Astern (1919) at €800,000 and two early Edvard Munch prints that exceeded estimates at €350,000 and €145,000.

Read the full article at The Art Newspaper - International art news and events