Bauhaus postcard by Dörte Helm, €4000 (£3570) at Stade Auktionen.
The German designer and graphic artist Dörte Helm trained for three years at the celebrated art school Bauhaus in Weimar, receiving her qualification as a Dekorationsmalerin (decorative painter) in 1922.
She remained in Weimar for another two years before she returned to Rostock where she had begun her training.
Among the pieces she created at the Bauhaus was a postcard for the school’s exhibition in Weimar in 1923. Her design was number 14 of the 20 postcards commissioned by the director Walter Gropius.
He invited not only such renowned artists as Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and László Moholy-Nagy to contribute, but also the most promising students, among them Helm, whose contribution was a variation on a motif by Oskar Schlemmer.
On February 11, an example of her postcard was sold by Stade Auktionen (23.8% buyer’s premium) in Grenzach-Wyhlen, next to Basel, to a bidder in the room for the guide of €4000 (£3570).
After the rise of the Nazis, the Bauhaus was forced to close.
Because of her Jewish roots, Helm was prohibited from working and many of her works were destroyed. She died of an infection in 1941.
£1 = €1.12
