Sale: 530 / Evening Sale / The Hermann Gerlinger Collection, June 10. 2022 in Munich Lot 6

 

6
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
Gutshof, 1910.
Watercolor and graphite
Estimate:
€ 80,000 / $ 86,400
Sold:
€ 300,000 / $ 324,000

(incl. surcharge)
Gutshof. 1910.
Watercolor and graphite.
Lower right corner signed. Verso inscribed "Gutshof". On firm wove paper. 49.8 x 65.1 cm (19.6 x 25.6 in), the full sheet.
[KT].

• Watercolors from the time around 1910 are particularly sought-after on the international auction market (source: artprice.com).
• Notable provenance in addition to Hermann Gerlinger: Carl Georg Heise was director of the Kunsthalle Hamburg and an important patron of German Expressionism.
• Perfect interplay of strong colors and an airy brushwork.
• Through the decomposition of the architectural forms, the composition has an almost abstract appeal and the colors come to the fore
.

The work is documented in the archive of the Karl and Emy Schmidt-Rottluff Foundation, Berlin.

PROVENANCE: Carl Georg Heise (1890-1979), Hamburg (until at least 1963).
Collection Hermann Gerlinger, Würzburg (with the collector stamp).

EXHIBITION: Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover, 1920, cat. no. 54.
Meister des Aquarells aus der deutschen Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, Kunstverein Hamburg, August 3 - September 15, 1963, cat. no. 165 (with illu.)
Schmidt-Rottluff. Aquarelle aus den Jahren 1909 bis 1969, 55. B.A.T. Ausstellung, B.A.T. Cigaretten Fabriken GmbH, Hamburg, June 13 - August 10, 1974, cat. no. 52 (with illu. on p. 165).
Das Aquarell der Brücke, Brücke-Museum, Berlin, September 5 - November 16, 1975, cat. no. 61.
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Retrospektive, Kunsthalle Bremen, June 16 - September 10, 1989; Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, September 27 - December 3, 1989, p. 229, cat. no. 65 (with illu., and illu. on plate 31).
Schleswig-Holsteinisches Landesmuseum Schloss Gottorf, Schleswig (permanent loan from Collection Hermann Gerlinger, 1995-2001).
Aquarelle der Brücke, Brücke-Museum Berlin, September 14, 1995 - January 7, 1996, cat. no. 61.
Kunstmuseum Moritzburg, Halle an der Saale (permanent loan from Collection Hermann Gerlinger, 2001-2017).
Die Brücke in Dresden. 1905-1911, Dresdner Schloss, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Galerie Neue Meister, October 20, 2001 - January 6, 2002, cat. no. 328 (with colro illu.).
Expressiv! Die Künstler der Sammlung Hermann Gerlinger, Albertina, Vienna, June 1 - August 26, 2007, cat. no. 16 (with color illu.).
Brückenschlag: Gerlinger - Buchheim, Buchheim Museum der Phantasie, Bernried am Starnberger See, Ocotber 28, 2017 - February 25, 2018,p. 222 (with colro illu.).
Schmidt-Rottluff. Form, Farbe, Ausdruck, Buchheim Museum, Bernried am Starnberger See, September 29, 2018 - February 3, 2019, p. 153 (with illu.).
Buchheim Museum, Bernried (permanent loan from Collection Hermann Gerlinger, 2017-2022).

LITERATURE: Heinz Spielmann (editor), Die Maler der Brücke. Collection Hermann Gerlinger, Stuttgart 1995, p. 220, SHG no. 291 (with illu.).
Hermann Gerlinger, Katja Schneider (editors), Die Maler der Brücke. Inventory catalog Collection Hermann Gerlinger, Halle (Saale) 2005, p. 47, SHG no. 69 (with illu.).
Brückenschlag: Gerlinger - Buchheim! Museumsführer durch die "Brücke"-Sammlungen von Hermann Gerlinger und Lothar-Günther Buchheim, Feldafing 2017, p. 222 (with illu. on p. 223).

In a letter from September 25, 1908 to Luise Schiefler, wife of the Hamburg lawyer and art patron Gustav Schiefler, Schmidt-Rottluff wrote: “My views on painting have changed and took a new path this year, that I myself do not know where it is supposed to take me. But this transformation was also linked to the fact that I painted little and with great many questions” (Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, inventory catalog of the collection of the Städtische Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, Chemnitz 1993, p. 323). During these years, painting was second to watercolors. Schmidt-Rottluff reached a point in his development where he clarified the relationship between what is depicted and the pictorial surface in an emphatic two-dimensionality. With moving brush strokes full of lightness and transparency, Schmidt-Rottluff captured landscapes such as the one of a manor offered here, which has an actual architectural presence that dissolves between trees, bushes, between an earthy foreground and a red-hot background. Schmidt-Rottluff only cites the things in this landscape without their dynamics getting lost, quite the opposite: the artist enhances the color tone by occasionally setting black contour lines in order to strengthen the individual, merging pictorial units. All parts of the representation, near and far, foreground and background appear on one level. Schmidt-Rottluff masterfully integrates sections of paper that are not covered with watercolor into an integral part of the composition. The watercolors created around 1910 are among Schmidt-Rottluff's greatest achievements. [MvL]



6
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
Gutshof, 1910.
Watercolor and graphite
Estimate:
€ 80,000 / $ 86,400
Sold:
€ 300,000 / $ 324,000

(incl. surcharge)