Art from the Butchery: Andy Warhol's Portrait of Karl Ludwig Schweisfurth up for Auction

  • MUNICH, Germany
  • /
  • June 06, 2012

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Andy Warhol, Portrait of Karl Ludwig Schweisfurth. 1980. Oil and silkscreen on canvas, 102 x 101,5 cm (40.1 x 39.9 in) Estimate: € 80.000-100.000
Ketterer Kunst

Andy Warhol couldn't believe what he saw: “Pigs, pigs, pigs (…) everywhere. And art.“ His visit with Karl Ludwig Schweisfurth, the then-owner of the meat company Herta, in February 1980, left a deep impression on Warhol. And that wasn't all: He also made a portrait of Schweisfurth that will be now be sold at Ketterer Kunst in Munich in the auction of Post War/Contemporary Art on June 9.

Next to a great number of self portraits as well as portraits, including Jackie Kennedy, Mick Jagger and Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol executed the “Portrait of Karl Ludwig Schweisfurth“ in a typical Pop-Art manner.

In his diary Warhol wrote about the deep impression that Schweisfurth, his company and his art collection had left on him: “He owned the complete Picasso portfolio, to which I added the Picasso print of Paloma. We looked at it, then (…) even more pigs, more salami and more ham (…) - smoked and painted. We shot Polaroids for the portrait and had tea."

The work from a private German collection will be called up with an estimate of € 80.000-100.000. Initial interest has already been shown which comes from the Schweisfurth family.

In 1984 Karl Ludwig Schweisfurth sold the Herta meat factory and began to produce organic food on
a farmstead in Upper Bavaria. Today the 'Hermannsdorfer Landwerkstätten' is a model company for
species-appropriate breeding and sustainable farming.

For further information about the auction on June 9, please visit www.kettererkunst.com.

 


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