On March 5, 2026, at 10:30 PM, Sotheby's "Modern and Contemporary British Art Day Sale, including the Erich and Senta Goritz Collection" was held in London as scheduled.The auction featured 135 lots, achieving a total of £9,156,800 with an 84% sell-through rate. 34% of the lots sold above their estimates, while 40% sold within their estimates.Irma Stern's "Two Swahili Girls, Zanzibar" sold for £635,000, becoming the top-selling item of the auction.

Erich Goeritz (1889–1955) and his wife Senta Goeritz née Sternberger were among the most influential Jewish collectors in Berlin during the Weimar Republic, and their collection fully reflects the landscape of German modern art in the 1920s.

His collection combines classic French Impressionism/Post-Impressionism with pioneering German Expressionism and Cubism, especially systematically collecting works by Ernst Barach, Erich Heckel, and Alexander Archipenko. His collection of Archipenko's works directly contributed to the artist's early academic research and exhibitions in Israel and the English-speaking world.

The total number of items is approximately 500 (paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints).The movement of the collection from Berlin to London and then to Tel Aviv is an important case study of the transmission of 20th-century European art during war and exile.
The French section includes Manet's "Bar at Folies-Bergère" (sold to Samuel Courtauld in 1926, now in the Courtauld Museum of Art); it also contains works by Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Monet, Cézanne, Gauguin, and others.
German and Eastern European Avant-garde: 22 sculpture-painting composites by Archipelago (one of the artist’s most important private collections); key works by Balach, Heckel, Kirchner, Kokoska, and others.

Wartime protection and donation: In 1933, Ehrlich deposited the core collection (including all Archiepian) with the Tel Aviv Art Museum;After his death in 1955, his family formally donated the vast majority of their collection to the museum, making it one of the largest private donations in the history of Israeli art institutions.The items being auctioned at Sotheby's this time are the remaining portions that were not included in the original donation and have been preserved by the family's descendants to this day.

New record:
Several artists, including Konstantin Alekseyevich Korovin, Dmitry Krasnovetsev, and Jonathan Clark, broke their personal records.
Top-selling item in this session:

Irma Stern's "Two Swahili Girls, Zanzibar" sold for £500,000 at hammer price, or £635,000 including commission.

Top 2 in sales this session:

Constantine, Alexeivich, and Korowin's "Late Afternoon" sold for £450,000 at hammer price, or £571,500 with commission.

Top 3 transactions in this session:

Auguste Rodin's "Homme Qui Marche (Figure), Taille Originale Or Moyen Modèle, Version Sur Colonne (Colonne De Saint-jean)" sold for £430,000 at hammer price, or £546,100 with commission.

Several artists broke auction records

Other items sold at auction:

In addition to the top three most expensive lots, the sale also includes masterpieces by numerous artists, including Konstantin Vyarov, Auguste Rodin, Ernst Barach, Alexei von Jarensky, Jack Butler Yeats, and Fernand Reiger.

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For more details on the auction items, please click to view the special session.