Photographic collage by Rauschenberg sold for DKK 1.16 million (€ 156,000)

At Tuesday evening's auction at Bruun Rasmussen in Copenhagen, the work “Harvest” (2007) by the American artist Robert Rauschenberg fetched a hammer price of more that one million Danish kroner (€ 156,000).

“This is the first time that an original work by Rauschenberg has ever been sold on the Danish art market. So we were all aflutter when his photographic collage went under the hammer here this evening. The collage is part of the ‘Runts’ series, which is one of his last works, but nonetheless pinpoints his qualities and experimental approach to the art,”explains a happy Niels Raben, head of Bruun Rasmussen's department of modern art.

Rauschenberg is one of the most distinctive American artists of the latter half of the 20th century. In the 1950s, he marked the transition between abstract expressionism and pop art, but his career was wide-ranging and versatile – over a period of six decades, his work spanned artistic forms of expression such as painting, collage, sculpture and performance.

American and British art in high demand

American art generally attracted a lot of attention at the auction, also when it came to postmodernist David Salle and his painting ‘Spanish Woman’ from 2007, which sold for DKK 330,000 (€ 45,000). A British sculpture entitled ‘Two Seated Figures’ from 1957 by Kenneth Armitage fetched the lofty hammer price of DKK 430,000 (€ 58,000).

Jorn’s mini dancer and Halonen’s winter landscape

We also succeeded in selling probably the most expensive square centimetre of Asger Jorn ever – the work ‘Spansk Danserinde’ (Spanish dancer) from 1940 measures just 22 X 9 cm, but went for DKK 320,000 (€ 43,000)! Preben Hornung also fetched a handsome hammer price of DKK 110,000 (€ 15,000) for a composition from 1949. This evening marked the debut of Finnish national romantic artist Pekka Halonen at our auctions, and a top price of DKK 380,000 (€ 51,000) was achieved for one of his poetic landscapes from 1900.