Karl & Faber Fine Art Auctions

27/08/2026

Time is running! Consign now for our autumn-Winter auctions! Modern & Postwar / Contemporary Art as well als Old Masters & 19th Century Art
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26/08/2026

Venice, 1970. When painting left the wall.
At the Venice Biennale, Agostino Bonalumi pushed one of the central ideas of his practice into the exhibition space itself: painting no longer had to remain flat.
Together with Enrico Castellani and Piero Manzoni, Bonalumi had already helped shape the radical ideas around Azimut, that an artwork should not imitate reality, but possess a reality of its own.

His pittura-oggetto brought that idea to life.
By shaping the canvas from behind, Bonalumi transformed painting into a physical body: a surface that projects into space, catches the light and changes with every shadow.

In this edition of SUMMER STORIES, we trace that development from the Venice Biennale back to our own work, where colour, volume, light and shadow turn the canvas into an object in its own right.

Agostino Bonalumi
Nero n°18, 1964
Result: €95,000

KARL & FABER
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Photo: Agostino Bonalumi, Struttura modulare bianca, 1970

25/08/2026

23/08/2026

Before the nails, there was the sea.
Günther Uecker grew up on the Wustrow peninsula on the Baltic coast — surrounded by water, wind and an endless horizon. This landscape remained an important point of reference throughout his life.
Later, light, movement and perception became central to his art. With his iconic nail works, Uecker transformed a simple everyday object into fields of changing shadows, rhythm and tension.
But the nail could also wound.
In Verletztes Feld, the ordered field is disrupted: nails pierce the surface, wood splinters break through it, and the physical force of the artist’s action remains visible.
In this edition of SUMMER STORIES, we trace a path from the quiet horizon of the Baltic Sea to one of the most powerful motifs in Uecker’s work.
Günther Uecker
Verletztes Feld, 1988
Sold at KARL & FABER for €42,000
Swipe to discover the story behind the work.

Photo: Lothar Wolleh, CC BY-SA 3.0

22/08/2026

Can you trust your eyes?
For Jesús Rafael Soto, art was never static. Lines vibrate, surfaces shift and space seems to dissolve, not because the work itself changes, but because we do.
A pioneer of Kinetic Art, Soto transformed movement and perception into the very subject of his work. The viewer is no longer simply looking at the artwork, but becomes part of its experience.
In this edition of SUMMER STORIES, we explore how Soto turned a change of perspective into a completely new way of seeing.

Jesús Rafael Soto
Azul y negro, 1971
Sold at KARL & FABER for €156,250

Swipe to discover the story behind the work.

Photo: Lothar Wolleh, CC BY-SA 3.0
Photo: “Soto” solo exhibition, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France, 1969 Photo André Morain

21/08/2026

What happens when the artist’s signature is enough to turn a human body into a work of art?

For Piero Manzoni, this was only one part of a much larger question: What makes something art?
From signed living sculptures and the artist’s breath to his radical Achromes, Manzoni continually challenged the boundaries between artist, artwork and material.
In this edition of SUMMER STORIES, we trace that idea back to one of its earliest manifestations: the seemingly silent, white surface of the Achrome.

Piero Manzoni
Achrome, 1957/58
Sold at KARL & FABER for €362,500

Swipe to discover the story behind the work.

20/08/2026

A journey through Pakistan, a photograph transformed in the darkroom, and an image that refuses to be read at first glance.

In Quetta (1974), Sigmar Polke combines photography and painting through overexposure, scratches and hand-applied watercolour. What begins as a travel photograph becomes a complex reflection on perception, manipulation and the stereotypes carried by images.
The work achieved a result of €400,000 at KARL & FABER.

16/08/2026

After moving to Italy in 1957, Rome became a lasting source of inspiration. Its history, mythology and poetry entered Twombly’s work—not as illustrations, but as traces of memory and thought.
Created between 1961 and 1979, Untitled (“ROMA”) brings together the defining elements of this language. For more than 40 years, the work remained in a private collection before appearing on the international art market for the first time.

In 2023, it sold at KARL & FABER for €635,000.

Photo: Cy Twombly in his studio on William Street, New York, 1956.

A visual language that began in the dark—and found its home in Rome.

13/08/2026

For more than four decades, Kiki Smith has placed women and the female body at the centre of her art—exploring vulnerability and strength, mortality and transformation, intimacy and self-determination.
Her work is closely associated with feminist art. Yet rather than defining a single image of what a woman should be, Smith allows different bodies, identities and experiences to exist alongside one another.

In Assembly II, eight life-size women stand together like the figures in a historical group portrait. They differ in age, appearance and identity. No single figure dominates the composition, and none disappears within the group.

Each woman is accompanied by her own handmade light bulb. Created from papier mâché, wood, mica and string, the bulbs do not actually illuminate. Their light is symbolic—suggesting an energy that belongs to each figure individually.

Together, the women form an assembly: a community whose strength does not come from becoming identical, but from standing together while remaining themselves.

First exhibited at the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona in 2009, Assembly II was sold at KARL & FABER in 2020 for €137,500, setting a world auction record at the time for a work on paper by Kiki Smith.

Eight women. Eight lights. One assembly.
What changes when women are no longer represented as one ideal, but as a community of individual voices?

Photo: Nina Subin