Collection of German Curator Kasper König Brings in $6.5 M. in Cologne Auction

Works sold from the private holdings of German contemporary art curator Kasper König raised around €6 million ($6.5 million) during a series of sales that took place at the headquarters of Van Ham auction house in Cologne.

Before his death at the age of 80 in August of this year, König began organizing the collection’s sale, choosing which works from his estate would be sold off to public bidders alongside Van Ham’s specialists after he donated a portion of them to a German museum.

The Cologne auction house, who held the event over the course of two days last week on October 1 and 2, moved forward with the sale following his death after reaching an agreement with König’s heirs about how the works would be distributed.

König was a prominent figure in the German art scene during his lifetime, having founded Skulptur Projekte Münster, a decennial outdoor sculpture exhibition in the North Rhine-Westphalia city and serving as the director of Museum Ludwig between 2000 to 2012. Three decades earlier, in 1968, he co-founded the still-running art publishing house Walther König Verlag with his brother.

The sale, titled “The Kasper König Collection — His Private Choice,” featured around 400 works of art produced by some major names active in Europe and America during the midcentury years including Richard Artschwager, Thomas Bayrle, William Copley, and Sigmar Polke.

Two works by Japanese conceptual artist On Kawara, a close confidante of König, sold separately to British and Swiss buyers. May 7, 1967, the sale’s top lot, went for €1.06 million with fees, setting a record for one of Kawara’s date-centered works, according to an auction house statement. A third work by William Copley’s titled Lady Be Good went for €172,000 to a Berlin-based collector. Fifty remaining works from his collection went to the Ludwig Museum in 2023.