Rating and value of paintings by Helene Funke

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Artist's rating and value Helene Funke     

Helene Funke is an autruchian artist well known to modern art lovers. Today, the prices of her works are rising under the auctioneer's hammer.

His oils on canvas are particularly prized, especially by French buyers, and the price at which they sell on the art market ranges from €150 to €61,000, a significant delta but one that speaks volumes about the value that can be attributed to the artist's works.

In 2023, his oil on canvas Kiefern am Meer, dating from 1908/10, sold for €61,000, against an estimate of €12,000-15,000. His value is rising sharply. 

Order of value from the most basic to the most prestigious

The artist's works and style

Hélène Funke's work, deeply rooted in a reflection on light and matter, questions the relationship between space and color. Her refined, subtle approach to painting is rooted in a rigorous exploration of transparency and texture.

Through superimposed layers of paint, often diluted, she succeeds in creating atmospheres that are both luminous and mysterious, where every brush movement seems both frozen and in perpetual evolution.

His style is fluid, almost calligraphic, where the artistic gesture is both imprint and trace.

The light tones she chooses, from off-white to shades of gray or pale blue, lend her works an ethereal softness, while allowing shadows to subtly intrude, like a discreet but intense presence.

Her meticulously crafted textural work recalls the artists' attachment to the tactile manipulation of surfaces, seeking to inscribe in matter the very breath of creation. Through this technique, Funke seems to suspend time, giving each canvas an almost timeless quality.

In this sense, she joins certain contemporary painters who, while using traditional materials, never cease to experiment with form and light, like the artists of lyrical abstraction.

However, Funke's intention remains far removed from any quest for illusion; each work is a pure exploration of the visible and invisible, inviting the viewer to plunge into a world where painting becomes a field of sensory experience.

The life of Helene Funke   

Born in Berlin in 1938, Hélène Funke was part of an era marked by the social and political upheavals of the post-war years, a time when art became, for many, a means of escaping the horrors of the past while questioning the collective memory.

After studying at the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts, she turned to a painterly practice of great rigor, where the search for light and matter became a central motif in her work.

Settling in Paris, she became close to French artistic circles, while maintaining her independence from the movements in vogue at the time.

His early works are influenced by geometric abstraction, but his work soon evolves towards a more introspective exploration of painting, where color and texture take center stage.

The artist then developed a unique technique, based on the use of successive layers of paint, giving his works a singular transparency and intimate depth.

This process, always at the service of a meticulous search for light, feeds on the spirit of Abstract Expressionism while distancing itself from it by its refusal of visual violence and overly marked gestuality.

Hélène Funke finds her rhythm in solitary work, far from the dominant trends in contemporary art, but influenced by the quest for formal purity of artists such as Pierre Soulages or the meditative silence of Lovis Corinth.

Far from being a simple reflection of his time, his work is a response to the tumult of the outside world, preferring to plunge the viewer into a soothing, luminous, almost secret contemplation.

His career, punctuated by exhibitions across Europe, bears witness to this highly exacting approach, in which painting becomes a means of introspection, a path to the invisible.

Focus on Silence in Blue, 1973

Hélène Funke's Silence in Blue (1973) reveals a deep reflection on color and light, treated with singular mastery.

Using a multi-layered blue, the artist creates an atmosphere that is both dense and fluid, where color seems to unfold endlessly, evoking vast marine or celestial horizons.

The purity of this blue brings about a subtle transformation in the viewer's gaze: far from the flatness characteristic of certain monochrome works, it becomes a surface that breathes, changing tonality according to the light and the angle of view.

This approach places Funke in the tradition of abstract painting, where color unfolds in a quest for emotional intensity, without ever sinking into crude self-affirmation.

She manipulates color as a living entity, where each nuance refers to the unspeakable, to a depth that expresses itself not in clarity, but in the blur of a discreet presence.

This work, while remaining faithful to the quest for abstraction of artists such as Yves Kleinis distinguished by a search for silence and subtlety. Blue here is not a vibrant explosion, but an invitation to contemplation.

In this way, the pigment chosen creates an ambient serenity and a sense of calm in the viewer. Unlike Klein, whose blue could be a form of metaphysical research, Funke succeeds in capturing a more personal, more intimate dimension, where the viewer, faced with the work, is called upon to engage in a form of introspection.

This blue thus becomes a mirror not only of the outside world, but also of our own interiority, offering us a visual experience based on the emotion of the moment and silent contemplation.

Helene Funke's imprint

Hélène Funke's mark on her time lies in her ability to capture the essence of abstraction while exploring sensual, introspective horizons.

By hijacking the language of color, she not only follows the tradition of abstract art, but reinvents a deeply personal reading of it, linked to the sensibility of her time.

His work on blue, in particular, highlights a more intimate perception of color, far removed from the excess or visual violence sometimes associated with abstraction.

Through this research, she moves away from the legacy of the great figures of the 20th century to infuse a contemplative dimension that responds to the atmosphere of the 1970s, marked by a quest for solace and a return to introspection.

In a context where artists have often turned to more radical or political forms, Funke distinguishes himself by cultivating a form of silent intimacy, a personal exploration that resonates deeply with contemporary concerns about individuality and human fragility.

Her influence on the art of her time is not measured in a stylistic revolution, but in her ability to return to the roots of abstract painting while responding to a need for appeasement and inner reflection. In this, she embodies a form of discreet resistance to the art of the urgent and the spectacular.

Helene Funke's stylistic influences

Hélène Funke's stylistic influences are revealed in an approach where color and form are organized around a subtle poetics, where the rigor of abstraction blends with more fluid breaths.

Drawing inspiration from the great masters of geometric abstraction, she is part of a tradition that, while marked by figures such as Malevich and Kandinsky, is distinguished by a more sensual, interior approach.

In many ways, Funke's palette seems nourished by the lyricism of Abstract Expressionism, but with a restraint that gives way to a quieter contemplation, approaching artists like Marie-Louise von Motesiczky.

Similarly, his choice of geometric shapes and line play can evoke the formalism of certain minimalist artists, without ever adopting their cold rigorism.

However, unlike the artists of the first generation of abstraction, she does not seek to bring color into dialogue with an architectural or spatial dimension, but rather to integrate it into a tactile relationship.

The fluidity of the colors, their balance, and the way they blossom on the canvas also seem inspired by elements of nature and landscapes, a sensibility she shares with the École de Paris and certain informal painters.

In the end, this fusion of lines and colors seems to go beyond direct influences to create a voice of its own, full of nuances and silences.

His signature

Not all Helene Funke's works are signed.

Although there are variations, here's a first example of his signature: