The first wooden sculpture by Erich Heckel at auction in Munich fetches €600,000

A SUMMARY OF THE MOST EXCITING ART NEWS FROM AROUND THE GLOBE

While we focus on Indian art, we can’t obviously function in a vacuum. It’s a small world and everything is connected, especially on the web. So, let’s train our spotlight across the world map to see what’s going on — from art trends to socio-political issues to everything that affects the great aesthetic global consciousness. Or, let’s just travel the world and have some fun!

The first wooden sculpture by Erich Heckel at auction in Munich fetches €600,000

Just seven wooden sculptures by the German artist Erich Heckel, a founding member of the avant-garde Die Brücke movement, survive today. Munich auction house Ketterer Kunst will offer the 80cm-tall Stehende (standing, 1920) for €600,000 to €800,000 from the collection of 91-year-old German entrepreneur Hermann Gerlinger. It is from a series of wooden sculptures made at Heckel\’s home in Osterholz, near Bremen, and is the only one that survives. Several of the artist\’s sculptures were lost in the Second World War during a 1944 studio fire that was the result of a bombing raid.  Ketterer Kunst is selling Hermann\’s collection in dedicated sales across the next three years. Another wooden sculpture at the auction, made by Heckel’s Die Brücke peer and close friend Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Hockende (squatting, 1910), has an estimate of €700,000 to €900,000 and depicts a female nude crouched over a round plinth. Mario von Lüttichau, a scientific consultant at Ketterer Kunst, says that Kirchner\’s sculpture was one of the ways the auction house came to determine the estimate for the Heckel sculpture (along with insurance claims from museums loaning these works). Read more on The Art Newspaper.

London dealer cleared over the negligent sale of a Chardin painting

The London-based dealer Simon Dickinson has been cleared of negligence over the sale of La Bénédicité (saying grace, 1744) by the 18th-century French artist Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin. Judge Simon Gleeson found no sign of breach of duty during the dealer\’s representation of the Wemyss Heirlooms Trust in the 2014 sale of the painting for £1.15m. The work went on to sell to the late Michel David-Weill for $10.5m just a few months later. The trust\’s trustees are \”considering their options for the future in light of the judgement\”, they have said. “The description of the painting in the leading expert’s catalogue raisonné for the artist as a ‘copie retouchée’ was entirely consistent with this attribution in the court’s view,” reads a statement from the gallery. “The sale price achieved of £1.15m was also found to be appropriate. The court in the process acknowledged that Mr. Dickinson is a recognized expert in Old Master paintings.” The court stopped short of making a decision on the work’s attribution, but did offer an opinion on the price the painting had gone on to fetch, describing the later figure as inflated and arguing that the market value of a Chardin sat closer to “the vicinity of £5m”. Read more on USA ArtNews.

Netherlands returns over 200 pre-Hispanic artifacts to Mexico

Mexico\’s foreign ministry says the Netherlands has returned 223 pre-Hispanic archaeological pieces. The returns result from \”active cooperation\” between the two countries. Mexico is trying to recover more of its cultural heritage held in foreign collections. Guatemala seized some 1,200 Mayan objects found at the house of two U.S. citizens as part of its investigations into crimes against cultural heritage. The Netherlands this year returned a collection of 343 pre-Hispanic era ceramics to Panama. Culture ministers from around the world have pledged to boost efforts to return stolen and illegally traded artifacts to countries of origin. Many are in European museums or private collections. Details on Reuters.