작품 상세

Signed 'H. Purrmann' lower right. - With a fragmentary label to the stretcher, therein titled 'Weibliche Aktstudie' and the artist's address 'Professor Hans Purrmann Berlin Grunewald Franz[ensbaderstraße 3]', probably inscriptions by the artist. In the first half of the 1920s, Hans Purrmann repeatedly spent several months living in Italy. His favourite places were Sorrento, Rome and Ischia, and he created numerous works at each of them - primarily landscapes, Roman cityscapes and light-flooded interiors. The present painting belongs to a series of nudes that Purrmann created in 1924, presumably in his studio in Rome. In the seven nudes of that year (Lenz/Billeter 1924/38-44), the artist placed his models on the same armchair, but in different positions and arranged in different room settings.The bright and richly nuanced depiction of the flesh tones of the models is set off by the surroundings maintained in dark tones, and they simultaneously incorporate the red, green and blue-grey tones prevailing there. The contrast between the light surfaces of the skin and the varied surface ornament of the arm chair, carpet and the tile floor exercises a distinctive visual charm to which the artist devoted himself with great interest - as can also be seen in another series of nudes created in 1926 (cf. Lenz/Billeter 1926/19-27). Regarding the distinctive character of the nudes in Purrmann's oeuvre, Gotthard Jedlicka writes: "In every nude, however intensely and minutely articulated it may be in its formal appearance, in drawing and colour, he takes seriously the individual who is manifested in it: even if only to the extent that its individual form is capable of entering into drawing and colour. His development and transformation in the field of painting can also be presented by way of the development of his figure painting. Depictions of nudes are relatively rare in his oeuvre, but if we take them out of that whole and place them side by side, we recognise that, throughout his long life, he was unconsciously driven to occupy himself with all of the problems involved in figure painting: standing, sitting and reclining nude and semi-nude figures within an interior identified through a rear wall or additional spatial features and objects." (cited in: Der Maler Hans Purrmann: Ölgemälde, Aquarelle, Zeichnungen und Graphik von 1898-1960, exhib. cat. Kunstverein Hannover, Hanover 1960, p. 14). 70.5 x 55 cm