Christie’s To Auction Collection Of Late Actor Maximilian Schell

The late Maximilian Schell was a renowned Austrian and Swiss film and stage actor, who also wrote, directed and produced a proportion of his own films. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the 1961 American film ‘Judgement at Nuremberg’.

Christie’s has now announced that they will be auctioning 45 works from the estate of the late Austrian actor in London, Amsterdam, and Paris, Salzburger Nachrichten has reported. The octogenarian film and stage actor died on February 1st of this year at the age of 83.

spokeswoman of Christie’s Munich; Marie Christine Gräfin von Huyn, said in a statement that the great actor had “collected art that was important to him by artists whom he admired. The artworks being put on the market in the sale from the estate of Maximilian Schell are artworks that were close to his heart.”

The Highlight of the actors collection include Albers’ Study for Homage to the Square: Kind Regards (1958) which is due to be auctioned in Amsterdam as part of the Postwar and Contemporary evening sale, and is slated to sell for between €150,000 to €200,000 – or £110,000 to £150,000. Other works from Schell’s estate include works by Josef Albers, Jean Dubuffet, Franz Kline, Jean Tinguely, and Roy Lichtenstein, and Jean Dubuffet’s painting Dramatique IX (1984) as well as Franz Kline’s black and white Untitled (1957). Both of which are estimated to sell for between €70,000 to €90,000 or £55,000 to £70,000.

Schell had top billing in a number of Nazi-era themed films, due to the fact that the actor could speak both English and German. He also received Oscar nominations: The Man in the Glass Booth (1975; best actor), where he played a character with two identities, and Julia, 1977; best supporting actor, where his character helps the underground in Nazi Germany. The actor was influenced from a young age by parents who had a strong relationship with the arts. Schell enjoyed an accomplished stage career. But found his true calling in film. Schell noted that during a lifetime of collecting art that after death “what remains is the art.”

Tags

, , ,