Oil on canvas
Monogrammed and dated lower left. Inscribed "Richard Müller Dresden 1950" on stretcher. With estate stamp on the folded canvas. 96 x 65,5 cm (37,7 x 25,7 in)
With a label of the Kunstsalon Hermann Abels, Cologne, on the stretcher.

We are grateful to Mr. Frank C. Kempe, Munich, for his kind help in cataloging this lot.

PROVENANCE: From the artist's estate.
Private collection Italy.

Tying in with the subjects of his early years, Richard Müller renders homage to a vanished Italianitá. Full of echoes of the subjects of Böcklin and Feuerbach, the recumbent female nude with the attributed Lyra is stylized as the muse. But it is endowed with an ostensible eroticism that competes with the attained symbolism. This composition's appeal, whether intended by Müller or not, is in the ambivalence of its statement. Richard Müller is often regarded the father of Neo-realism, however, his subjects move him much closer to Surrealism, which he presumably did not aspire in its consistency. [KD].