작품 상세

Pencil and watercolour on thin drawing paper (from a pad, upper margin with perforation) 9.7/10.1 x 19.9 cm, on verso mounted to a support sheet on the left margin (13.8/14 x 19.9 cm), framed under glass. On verso upper left stamped "INGEBORG SPENGELIN/ FRIEDRICH SPENGELIN" in blue. - The support sheet dated "1924/25" in pencil lower right, lower right margin with fragment of the red estate stamp. - Upper and lower margins with minor creases, left margin with slight glue stain showing through to recto. v. Maur A 182 We would like to thank Karin v. Maur, Stuttgart, for her additional information. Provenance Ingeborg and Friedrich Spengelin, Hamburg (with name stamp on reverse; acquired 1960); private collection, Rhineland Exhibition Stuttgart 1953 (Württembergischer Kunstverein), Oskar Schlemmer. Gedächtnisausstellung zum 10jährigen Todestag, cat. no. 193; Hanover/ Mannheim/ Saarbrücken/ Ulm/ Wiesbaden/ Karlsruhe/ Dortmund/ Kiel/ Pforzheim/ Lübeck/ Bremen 1960/61 (Kestner-Gesellschaft/ Städtische Kunsthalle/ Saarland-Museum/ Ulmer Museum/ Nassauischer Kunstverein/ Badischer Kunstverein/ Museum am Ostwall/ Kunsthalle Kiel und Schleswig-Holsteinischer Kunstverein/ Kunst- und Gewerbeverein Industriehaus/ Overbeck-Gesellschaft/ Kunstverein), Oskar Schlemmer. Handzeichnungen, Aquarelle, cat. no. 14 (there dated "Um 1923" [c. 1923]); with the exhibition label of the Kestner-Gesellschaft Hannover on the reverse of the mat) Karin v. Maur compares the present work with the watercolour "Halbfigur in Rechteckfeldern" dated 1925 (cf. v. Maur A 183, see comparative illus.). In addition to the general "sketchist execution, that he [Schlemmer] does not allow himself so extensively in the early twenties", she sees a "similarity to the chessboard-like structure of the background" (in a note of 6 October 2013). The colourless, black-and-white background structure appears here as a formal counterpoint to the rounded heads shaped in colour. With its regular repetition the strict graphic pattern fills the negative spaces in the narrow horizontal composition. The suggestion of a spatial effect in the relationships between and among the busts nonetheless results from their modulation in terms of colour and their positioning, so that an imperceptible shift, which is perceived in terms of space, results between the female figure seen from behind in the middle of the foreground, the stylised male profile at the left and the diagonally tilted figure of the blond female at the right, placed further into the background. This play between "binding to surface" and "reaching out into space", between "two-dimensionality and three-dimensionality" (Karin v. Maur, Oskar Schlemmer, Monographie, Munich 1979, cf. p. 152) is of central significance for Oskar Schlemmer's pictorial concept. "In this context the most important link in this interweaving of surface and space, of pictorial world and real world, becomes the figure seen from behind, which Schlemmer - after C. D. Friedrich and Seurat - once again grants a central role. However, his preference for figures turned inwards towards the picture also derived from his striving for universality and the absolute, which made him avoid everything personal; it also corresponded to his nature, which was - in spite of his good-naturedness - predominantly distanced and introverted" (cf. v. Maur, ibid., p. 153).