Asta: 535 / Evening Sale with Collection Hermann Gerlinger del 09 dicembre 2022 a Monaco di Baviera Lot 7

 

7
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Akt vor Spiegel, in Tub steigend, 1911.
Black Chalk drawing
Stima:
€ 15,000 / $ 16,200
Risultato:
€ 32,500 / $ 35,100

( commissione inclusa)
Akt vor Spiegel, in Tub steigend. 1911.
Black Chalk drawing.
With the estate stamp of the Kunstmuseum Basel (Lugt 1570 b) and the hand-written registration number "B Dre/Bg 171" on the reverse. On wove paper. 33 x 26.5 cm (12.9 x 10.4 in), the full sheet. [CH].

• With the female nude, its mirrored image and the self-carved wooden figure of a seated female nude, Kirchner created a sophisticated composition.
• The wooden figure is Kirchner's "Hockende", part of the Collection Hermann Gerlinger, which is also offered in this auction (see lot 6).
• Kirchner and the artists of the "Brücke" made novel and seminal interpretations of the female nude as an independent pictorial element.
• In those years Kirchner's studio was not only the center of the "Brücke" artist's activities, it was also subject of many depictions
.

The work is documented at the Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Archive, Wichtrach/Bern.

PROVENANCE: Artist's estate (Davos 1938, Kunstmuseum Basel 1946, with the hand-numbered estate stamp on the reverse).
Stuttgarter Kunstkabinett Roman Norbert Ketterer, Stuttgart.
Galerie Henze & Ketterer, Wichtrach/Bern.
Collection Hermann Gerlinger, Würzburg (acquired from the above in 2000, with the collector's stamp Lugt 6032).

EXHIBITION: Kunstmuseum Moritzburg, Halle an der Saale (permanent loan from the Collection Hermann Gerlinger, until 2017).
Buchheim Museum, Bernried (permanent loan from the Collection Hermann Gerlinger, 2017-2022).

LITERATURE: Ulrich Pfarr, Zwischen Ekstase und Alltag. Zur Rezeption der Lebensreform in der künstlerischen Praxis der "Brücke", in: Die Lebensreform. Entwürfe zur Neugestaltung von Leben und Kunst um 1900, vol. I, Institut Mathildenhöhe, Darmstadt 2001, pp. 251-256 (with illu.).
Wolfgang Henze, Die Plastik Ernst Ludwig Kirchners. Monographie mit Werkverzeichnis, Wichtrach/Bern 2002 (with illu. no. 87).
Hermann Gerlinger, Katja Schneider (eds.), Die Maler der Brücke. Inventory catalog Collection Hermann Gerlinger, Halle (Saale) 2005, pp. 318f., SHG no. 718 (with illu.).

In this drawing by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner from the Hermann Gerlinger Collection we see a bather getting into a bath tub. She is reflected in a mirror leaning against the wall, in front of which we see a painted chest of drawers, probably also made by Kirchner. The mirror is flanked by two tall tree stumps that serve as pedestals: On the right pedestal we find the wooden figure "Hockende" from 1910 (Henze 1910/15), also part of the Gerlinger Collection and offered in this auction. It is an interior depiction typical of Kirchner's work, in which the movement of a naked female body and its reflection in a mirror is captured in a snap-shot accompanied by an array of studio staffage. The artist captured the essence in swift lines rendered on the paper without any shading or hints of plasticity. The contours are captured, everything is reduced to the two-dimensional, so that one gets a good impression of the situation without being distracted by unnecessary details. Only the two dark pedestals show a strong zig-zag hatching. As so often in Kirchner's works, the depiction is subject to a hierarchical proportion that makes the nude and the tub appear over-sized, while the reflection of the bathers in the mirror appears short. Models and muses got naked in front of Kirchner to let him depict them in drawings, watercolors, paintings, graphic art, photographs and sculptures. In the present work it is the duplication of the bather next to a small sculpture of a squatting female nude that reflects the sitter’s movement in the mirrored image: The bather steps into the tub with both arms loose along her body; while the nude in the mirror has her left arm up and wrapped around her head, and the small, sculptural nude on the pedestal has both arms wrapped around her slightly tilted head. Thus we are dealing with a motion sequence here, from the purely statuary to the figura serpentinata.

Alexandra Henze Triebold



7
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Akt vor Spiegel, in Tub steigend, 1911.
Black Chalk drawing
Stima:
€ 15,000 / $ 16,200
Risultato:
€ 32,500 / $ 35,100

( commissione inclusa)