The Germans love Hammershøi. They love Hammerhøi so much it is now the top selling poster in the country. The story started when the Städel Museum in Frankfurt ran a campaign through a nationwide drugstore chain , where amongst the tampons, dental floss and vitamin pills you could buy color prints of the paintings in the collection. And when the Germans, stood there in front of a range of famous European paintings, most chose the subject ‘Interior, Strandgade 30‘ (1901). The original painting was purchased by the Städel Museum two years ago and is now one of the museums ‘extremely popular’ paintings.
And isn’t it so often the way. Hammershøi, was considered so boring by our very own National Gallery, that the erstwhile Director, back in the 30’s handed over 30 masterpeices back to a lawyer who has contributed them for free!
80 years later and two paintings by Hammershøi were sold at Sotheby’s in London for two very wealthy American art collectors: ‘Interior with windsor chair’ was sold for well over €3 million, whilst ‘Interior with Mirror’ was sold for about €2 million.
In total, the auction house Sotheby’s sold 31 paintings by Danish artist over the past ten years. Two have gone back to Denmark, while 29 have ended in Japan, Germany, Switzerland and the United States.
Why this sudden surge of interest? Felix Krämer from Städel Museum explanation is something as profane, as the fact that Hammershøis rooms have a new age minimalist aesthetic, which you now see in architecture magazines around the world. A sentiment we at CultureNordic can only wholeheartedly agree with!
Order your very own high quality Hammerhøi art print from the National Gallery of Denmark on the CultureNordic site here.
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