?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
CARL GROSSBERG Kran, Berlin-Wedding.
Watercolor and pen and ink on wove paper, 1922. 345x280 mm; 13⅝x11 inches. Signed, inscribed "Berlin Wedding" and dated in ink, lower left recto.
Provenance: Collection of Justus Bier; thence by descent to current owner.
Justus Bier (1899-1990) was a German American art historian who championed the Bauhaus and contemporary German artists of the 1930s, including Paul Klee, Lionel Feininger, and Carl Grossberg, the latter of whom Bier befriended and profiled several times during the 1920s and 1930s. Grossberg (1894-1940) was trained at the Bauhaus and became a successful artist and interior designer during the 1930s, known for his meticulous portraits of new technology and machinery. Bier also found success during this time. He was curator of the Kestner Society and Museum in Hanover from 1930 until 1936, when the Society was closed by the Nazi government and Bier exiled. Alternatively, Grossberg remained in Germany and was drafted into military service in 1939. He died following an automobile accident in France a year later. After emigrating to the United States, Bier taught art history at the University of Kentucky, eventually chairing the department from 1946 to 1960. In 1960, Bier became the director of the North Carolina Museum of Art, and continued to lead the organization until his retirement in 1970.
