Art auction at the Kulturforum: Auctioning paintings for refugees

Your favorite pictures can be found quickly. For example, a large-format painting by Katrin Brause, which impresses with its subversive humor and colorful painting. A mountain range against a steel-blue sky, in front of it a traditionally dressed mountaineer raises a foaming beer glass. White flying objects move in formation over this caricature of an Alpine idyll. Geese? No. Tampons.

This piece of jewelry by Neo Rauch’s Leipzig master student is available for a minimum bid of 600 euros. At the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (EKBO), which is once again inviting people to an art auction in aid of refugees on November 30th. Beforehand, the 48 paintings, sculptures, collages and objects for sale can be seen in the Church of St. Matthäus at the Kulturforum. That’s where auctioneer Fares Al-Hassan will bring down the hammer next week.

A large-format photograph by Mischa Leinkauf is available for the minimum bid of 950 euros. It comes from the series “Physical Dialectics” from 2022, for which the Berlin photographer photographed colossal industrial architecture in the Ruhr area. Steaming power plant cooling towers and a wind turbine merge into a gray and white technology elegy that reduces the man looking out of the hatch of the wind turbine to a toy figure.

14 volunteer curators, who also acted as a jury, requested the works of artists. The spectrum ranges from a monochrome landscape watercolor by Kurt Mühlenhaupt to a tulip still life photographed in the style of the old masters by Ingar Krauss and the blue foaming seascape “The Spirit in the Waters 2” by FRANEK to the comic-like condensed family scene “Childhood (Summer)” by the popular artist Charlie Stein.

30,000 euros in proceeds are possible

The patron is art patron Peter Raue, who praises the great tradition of the auction during the preview and states, in an unintentionally funny way: “The work has gotten better and better.” He thinks the initiative is important because it shows the church that it cares about people who need help, says Raue.

The art auction raises an average of around 30,000 euros. And Hannes Langbein, the EKBO art representative and pastor of St. Matthäus, emphasizes that the church also wants to use the auction to counteract the impression that refugees currently only appear in public as a “problem”.

Lilla von Puttkamer, who donated her painting “Melting Snowman,” reports in response to the question about her involvement that her family also has a history of migration. “Especially in times of a shift to the right, it is important to support an auction like this.” This time it is deliberately aimed at art enthusiasts with a smaller budget.

For the first time this year, not only works of art can be auctioned off, but also “art experiences” that the organizers have acquired from the Kulturforum neighbors. As a group of ten people you can take a look behind the scenes of the Decorative Arts Museum with director Sibylle Hoimann. Or 12 people can attend a Berlin Philharmonic rehearsal with director Andrea Zietzschmann. The minimum bids for the group activities are 500 euros. If that’s not a Christmas present for culturally active families of choice.