STORY: As if the artist were present: Painter Max Beckmann watched from his yellow-pink self-portrait on Thursday at the auction of the painting at the Villa Grisebach auction house. The estimates went up even before the auction on Thursday. In the end, the hammer fell at 20 million euros – the highest amount ever paid for a painting at auction in Germany. It was not initially known who paid the 20 million plus 3.2 million euros in fees. Beckmann painted the picture in 1943 in Amsterdam, where he had fled from the Nazis, and gave it to his wife, who kept it until her death. Only then did it go to a private collection in Switzerland. They had it auctioned off.