1 Joszef Rippl-Ronai (Hungarian, 1861-1927)
Les Jardins du Luxembourg, c. 1898, wool embroidery shaded in oil paint on canvas
CRP016
Born in Kaposvár (Hungary). In 1884 he went to Munich, like many artists from his country, did before gravitating towards Paris to study painting, and in 1886 to the French capital, where he was a disciple of Munkácsy, the most outstanding Hungarian Realist. In 1888 he was influenced by Les Nabis. He returned to Hungary, where an important exhibition of his output from 1890-1900 was held. He exhibited in Germany and Austria with great success. He also designed interiors, furniture and stained-glass windows. His paintings are held at the National Gallery of Hungary (Budapest), the National Gallery of Washington, the Musée d’Orsay, the MoMA and the museums of Cleveland and Chicago.
Monogram R bottom right.
Rippl-Ronai was a close friend of Aristide Maillol, who made some embroideries before becoming a sculptor. Maillol gave up embroidery because it left him blind several months. Inspired by Maillol’s embroideries, Rippl-Ronai used to draw in ink on the back of the canvas, subsequently embroidered by his wife. Maillol’s influence is obvious in the use of point lancé by Rippl-Ronai; however, Rippl-Ronai’s points lancés, often highlighted with oil painting, are made in wool and not in silk, tighter and flatter than Maillol’s. This emphasizes the decorative and artisanal character of his embroidered pictures. Maillol and Rippl-Ronai visited the Cluny museum in Paris together so as to admire the Spanish Renaissance tapestries, made in point lancé. Unlike to Maillol’s delicate colours and subtil contrasts, Rippl-Ronai’s colours are brilliant and his contrasts marked, which adds to his decorative and artisanal appearance even more.
Just like his paintings from around 1910, the style of Rippl-Ronai’s embroidered pictures is characterized by their green, yellow, red and mauve tones, separated by black or brown; he used colours markedly contrasted that he didn’t dare use in his paintings of the time -the bright reds of his embroidered pictures contrast strongly with his yellows, greens and blacks- even if he will use them a decade later in paintings like Je peins Lazarine et Anelle au jardin, Hepi et les autres ont chaud and Ambiance d’été au jardin de la villa Roma, of around 1910. The colours composition of his embroidered pictures is the following: green is the dominant colour, yellow the secondary one, red the tertiary one and mauve the analogous. The background of these works is always green (trees) and yellow (the light that filters among them).
2 Eugène Delacroix (French, 1798-1863)
La femme du pêcheur à la plage, c. 1843-45, /oil on canvas
CRP002
The greatest of the French Romantic painters, his use of colour influenced the development of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Born in Charenton-Saint-Maurice, near Paris, he studied under the famous academic painter Guérin and admired Rubens, Raphael, the Venetians and his English contemporaries. Inspired by historical and contemporary events, as well as literature, he was a great reader and friend of famous writers. In 1825 he went to London and established a relationship with English painters; English literature also provided him with subjects. In 1831 he received the Legion of Honour; his most famous painting, Liberty Leading the People, was acquired by the State and exhibited in the Salon with great success. In 1832 he travelled to Morocco accompanying the French ambassador; he discovered the Orient with its light and colours and the experience inspired exotic scenes for the rest of his life. In 1839 he travelled to the Netherlands and studied Rubens in depth. For three decades he executed numerous decorative cycles in official buildings and churches, while continuing to send works to the Salon.
The signature “E.D.” is used on occasion by the artist those years, his fame being perfectly consolidated; previously he preferred a most complete form. The title reproduces that of a work at the Mesdag Museum (The Hague) attributed to Jean-François Millet, probably after as subject by Delacroix; it was bought from an art dealer prior to1886 and has been assigned various dates between 1848 and 1855-60. The connection with Millet comes from a loan of the work by the Mesdag Museum in 1887; it is described as “an old woman sitting on a rock beholding the sea terrified”. It could be a preparatory sketch for a bigger picture; the small size and the sketch-like and expressionist making fit in with the numerous works of the kind he made all his life. Claude Monet refers to this modality in a letter written in 1859: “They are only hints, sketches, but they, as always, have fire and movement”. The laboratory analysis confirmed a date after 1850 and that the colours match up with with those used by Delacroix.
A certain similarity with Michelangelo’s Sybils in the Sixtine Chapel has attracted the attention; indeed, her pose and proportions make her similar above all to the Persic one; with all of them she shares the mannerist canon with a elongated and powerful body a a small head. It is one more demostration of his permanent classical vocation and his admiration for the old masters.
3 Dante Gabriel Rossetti (English,1828-1882) & William Morris (English,1834-1896)
The Owl Chair, 1856, natural and painted kapur
CRP004
Rossetti, born in London, was a member of an Anglo-Italian family of writers; he himself was a painter and poet and in 1848 founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, an artistic movement that idealised the Middle Ages. In his youth he was an informal disciple of Ford Madox Brown, who transmitted to him his admiration for the Nazarenes, the German Pre-Raphaelites, and aimed to recover the purity of pre-Renaissance art along with William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and others; he combined painting, poetry and social idealism. The ritual and ornamentation of the Gothic period had a profound influence on him. In 1854 he achieved a powerful patron, art critic John Ruskin, but by then the group had broken apart. Later, with Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, he began a second phase of the movement, marked by enthusiasm for a legendary past and the ambition to reform applied arts, advocating for the arts to include crafts. With Morris as their driving spirit, they designed stained-glass windows, bookbindings, wallpapers, embroidery and furniture.
Morris was born in Walthamstow, near London; a designer, craftsman, poet and Socialist pioneer, his designs of decorative arts pieces revolutionised Victorian taste. In his youth he worked with G. E. Street, one of the architects of the Gothic Revival movement; under the influence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti he abandoned architecture for painting. In 1861, with Ford Madox Brown, Rossetti, Burne-Jones and others, he founded Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Company, an association of “fine art workers”, to make furniture, fabrics, stained glass windows, wallpaper, etc.; in 1874, the company was restructured as Morris & Company. In 1883 he began to travel through industrial areas to spread Socialism; he founded the Socialist League and later the Socialist Society of Hammersmith. In 1891 the Kelmscott Press began to operate; it printed magnificent books with typography designed by Morris and inspired by medieval sources.
It was in the appartament Morris shared with Burne-Jones on 17 Lion Square, Bloomsbury (London). At the Victoria & Albert Museum in London there are two chairs very similar to this one, dated in 1856, the year Rossetti’s frienship with Morris and Burne-Jones, then students in Oxford, began, and the start of the second stage of the Pre-Rafaelite Brotherhood. Morris made pieces of furniture on designs by Rossetti and by Burne-Jones; these chairs match a kind of solid and rural-like, reminiscent of the Middle Ages. They wanted to market them at low prices so as everybody would have access to them. With Rossetti he also created a fine armchair with reed seat.
4 Georges Lacombe (French, 1868-1916)
Portrait de Marthe Lacombe et de ses filles, 1907-08, wood
CRP031
Born in Versailles into a wealthy family, he didn’t need to live off art and didn’t sell his paintings. He was a painter and sculptor; he studied with Henri Gervex and Alfred Philippe Roll at the Académie Julian. Above all, he admired Gauguin; his work was symbolic and reminiscent of Japanese prints. He spent summers on the coast of Brittany; he established a relationship with Les Nabis, who were very interested in Gauguin and in the search for a pictorial language that was more expressive in form and colour. He painted scenes of Brittany and the sea. Around 1893 he met Gauguin and began to carve simple wooden sculptures. His work can be found at the Musée d’Orsay, the National Gallery of Washington, the Cortauld Institute, the Norton Simon collection and the museums of Indianapolis, Quimper and Rennes.
Exhibited in 1908 at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
5 Armand Point (French,1860/61-1932)
Armoire, c. 1892, lime with brass mounts
CRP014
Born in Algiers. He was a Symbolist painter, engraver and designer. He first painted Orientalist scenes of Algeria; in 1888 he went to Paris and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts with Auguste Herst and Fernand Cormon. From 1890 onwards he exhibited at the National Society of Fine Arts. He was influenced by Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites, and was a member of the first Nabi group. He travelled to Italy and saw Botticelli’s Primavera; Botticelli and Leonardo made a great impression on him and he set out to resurrect the art of the 15th and 16th centuries. Later he became a full-fledged Symbolist; in 1896-1901 he lived in Marlotte and founded the Haute-Claire workshop, not far from the headquarters of the Barbizon school. At the turn of the century he became increasingly interested in the decorative arts and aimed to emulate William Morris.
Carved by sculptor Charles Virion (1865-1946) after a design by Point. It was in the designer’s bedroom. On a leg of the bed that is part of the bedroom furniture the signature “AP” appears, with the letters intertwined. Point designed it, for his personal use, at the Association de la Haute Claire de Marlotte, in the Forest of Fontainebleau. Drawing on William Morris’ Red House, Point founded the Association de la Haute Claire in 1892; it was the first artists colony in continental Europe created for the purpose of producing decorative art works designed by an artist. Point surrounded himself with craftsmen who transcribed his drawings on metal, enamel, wood and other media, often emplying forgotten Italian Renaissance techniques Exhibited in 2006-09 at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs of Paris.
6 Eduard Bick (Swiss, 1883-1947)
Stehendes Mädchen, c. 1900, stained ash tree wood
CRP021
Born in Wil (Switzerland), he was a sculptor, draftsman and graphic artist; he worked in Zurich and Sant’Abbondio, where the foundation that bears his name was created upon his death. He was the son of a goldsmith and learned this trade. In 1906 he entered the Kunstakademie in Munich; in 1908 he moved to Rome and began to devote himself to sculpture. Between 1910 and 1914 he lived in Berlin, but spent seasons in Italy. When the war broke out he returned to Wil and then to Berlin; in 1919 he returned definitively to Switzerland; he settled in Zurich, where he died.
Provenance: the estate of Odette Valabregue Wurzburger (French, born in Avignon and dead in Cleveland in 2006), a philantropist and Law teacher, co-founder of the Cleveland International Piano Competition, and a decorated member of the French Resistance. A similar wooden, with the same title and date and 79.5 cm high, was given by baron August Freiherr von der Heydt to the Weimar Fine Arts Museum. The Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal keeps one similar sculpture, documented and reproduced in the sculpture catalogo of this museum.
7 William Degouve de Nuncques (French, 1857-1935)
Romeo y Julieta, 1899, oil on canvas
CRP020
Born in Monthermé (Ardennes, France); his family settled in Belgium. A self-taught painter, he came into contact with the Belgian Symbolist poets and belonged to the group Les XX. He travelled a great deal and painted views of Italy, Austria and France; his parks at night are very representative of his style, transmitting the atmosphere of magic and mystery of his works; it has been said that he influenced Surrealism, especially in the case of Magritte. From 1900 to 1902 he lived in the Balearic Islands, painting landscapes. His works can be found at the Musée d’Orsay, the Kröller-Müller de Otterlo and the Musée d’Orsay in Brussels.
Also entitled The lovers. The artist is almost unknown in Spain but enjoys celebrity in the sphere of Central European Symbolism. He draw inspiration in French Symbolist poets like Stéphane Mallarmé and Rémy de Gourmont, but above all in Belgian Symbolist poet and novelist Georges Rodenbach. Very representative of his style are his mysterious images of houses and forest views, and mainly his parks by night with streetlamps projecting enigmatic shadows, like The pink house (1892), which convey the atmosphere of magic and mystery of his works; it has been said that he influenced on Surrealism, mainly on Magritte, four decades his junior, with his light effects.
8 Henri Edmond Cross (French,1856-1910)
Vue de Gravelines (nord), vu du Grand-Fort-Philippe, c. 1891, oil on canvas
CRP012
Born in Douai (France). The first time he exhibited at the Salon, in 1881, he changed his surname, Delacroix, to the English form Cross so as not to be confused with Eugène Delacroix; at first he used only the name Henri but then he used Henri-Edmond to avoid confusion with the sculptor Henri Cross. He studied in Lille with Alphonse Colas. In 1884 he was one of the founders of the Society of Independent Artists. His influence from Seurat and Signac made him a disciple of Pointillism. He was initially inspired by Manet and the Impressionists, but in 1891 he produced his first Neo-Impressionist work. He settled in the south of France, where he painted harbours and scenes of peasant life from a point of view close to anarchism. In the mid-1890s, he and Signac abandoned coloured dots for a technique resembling mosaic, an important step towards the development of Fauvism. His work can be found at the Hermitage, the Musée d’Orsay, the Metropolitan and the Thyssen in Madrid, and in the museums of Chicago, San Francisco, Cologne, etc.
The approximate date of this painting, 1891, marks the turning point in the artist’s life and style: Seurat dies in March; he had spent his last summer in Gravelines, close to Dunquerque, painting landscapes and planning The circus, his last work. When his Bathers at Asnières were rejected by the jury of the Salon in 1884, Seurat decided to found the Société des Artistes Indépendents with his friends. The following year the divisionism or pointillism is fully formulated and some artists apart from Cross join it: Signac, Dubois-Pillet, Maximilian Luce or Belgian Van Rysselberghe, besides Pissarro, temporally; it attracts Gauguin, Van Gogh and Regoyos’ attention as well.
Also in 1891 he makes his first pointillist work, a portrait of his wife, and for health reasons he settled permanently in the South, firstly in Cabassa and later in Saint-Clair, close to Saint-Tropez, where Signac used to goes. This one, the main representative of the movement after the early passing of ts creator, was a great traveller and painted the French harbours. That of Gravelines, in Cross’ luminous and colorist vision, is a excellent demonstration of how the artist from Douai interpreted such a rigurous style; he, using bigger points and a glowing chromatism, exerced an influence in the beginnings of Fauvism on Matisse, Derain y Braque’s work. If the date assigned to this painting is right, it means that it was ahead of this subsequent development.
9 Wassily Kandinsky (Russian, 1866-1944)
A Street in Murnau, c. 1908, oil on hardboard
CRP032
Born in Moscow, after learning music and painting, he studied law and economics at Moscow University, where he taught after 1892. He discovered Rembrandt, the Impressionists and Wagner and decided to devote himself to painting. He moved to Munich and studied with the painter Anton Azbe and at the Academy. In 1902 he exhibited for the first time with the Berliner Sezession and in 1904 at the Salon d’Automne in Paris. He was inspired by the music of Arnold Schönberg and the texts of Wilhelm Worringer. Alongside Franz Marc he founded the Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter; in 1911 they held their first exhibition at the Tannhäuser gallery in Munich. During these years he chose the path of pure abstraction; his theoretical ideas are found in texts such as Concerning the Spiritual in Art and Point and Line To Plane. In 1914 he moved to Switzerland and then to Moscow; in 1917 he became a member of the People’s Commissariat for Education. When Socialist Realism was imposed, he returned to Germany and taught at the Bauhaus, which the Nazis closed in 1933; his art was considered “degenerate” and he fled to Paris; in Neuilly-sur-Seine he reverted to the free abstraction of his early years. His work can be found in major museums such as MoMA and the Guggenheim in New York, the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Nue Pinakothek in Munich, the Ludwig in Cologne, and the Trétiakov Gallery.
In the summer of 1908 Kandinsky and his partner, the painter Gabriele Münter, discover Murnau, not far from Munich; it will be for him an earthly paradise and the place where he will revise his artistic approach, which very soon will lead him to pure abstraction. The following year they buy a house, where they will spend some periods until 1914. In his repeated stays he paints many small oil sketches of Murnau, generally, like here, a broad street in perspective to the background with bright and contrasted colours, or country roads.
10 Hermann Max Pechstein (German, 1881-1955)
Portrait of Charlotte Kaprolat, c. 1909, oil on linen
CRP033
A painter and engraver; an outstanding member of the German expressionist group Die Brücke and known above all for his nudes and landscapes. Born in Zwickau (Germany); in 1900 he went to study in Dresden. In 1906 he joined Die Brücke; this and his knowledge of Matisse’s works led him to use discordant, highly emotive colour combinations. In 1910 he became one of the founders of the Berlin Neue Sezession. In 1914 he travelled to the South Pacific, where he painted exotic subjects in a Primitivist style. Back in Germany, he designed stained glass windows and mosaics and held a teaching position in Berlin. He was forced to resign when the Nazis declared his work “decadent”; he would not work again until after the war.
It is a work very representative of the changes art undergoes at the turn of the century and specifically of German expressionism, replacing the objective representation of reality with the artist’s experience, its expression and its effect on the beholder. The year 1909 was key in Pechstein’s evolution with his first trip to Nidden (Baltic): in contact with nature, he creates freely and his style comes to fruition; those years mean the culmination of his art, which melts shape, colour and expression. It is as well a fundamental date because it marks the beginning of the height of Die Brücke, which receives the decisive encouragement of Fauvism.
11 Jean-Jacques Gailliard (Belgian, 1890-1976)
Le Paradis cramoisi, 1917, oil on canvas
CRP065
Born in Brussels. He was a painter, draughtsman, engraver, lithographer and sculptor; he was one of the first Belgian abstract artists. In 1912 he was seduced by the mystical theses of Swedish theosophist Swedenborg and converted to the New Jerusalem Church. Since 1923 he took part in the exhibitions of La Lanterne Sourde, 7 Arts and Les Peintres Constructeurs; in 1924 he taught drawing at the Institut des Arts et Métiers in Brussels; in 1925 he founded the group L’Assaut alongside Flouquet and others. In 1971 he was elected member of the Academy of Sciences, Language and Fine Arts of Belgium, Plastic Arts department. He painted urban views, landscapes, seascapes, portraits, nudes and still lifes; his work can be found in museums in Belgium and also in the United States, Israel, France and Ireland.
Provenance: Queen Elisabeth of Belgium; from her it passed to Dr. Kyriakidis, European representative of Greece in Brussels. The back bears the label RE (Queen Elisabeth) and the hand-written inventory number 945.
12 Georges Vantongerloo (Belgian,1886-1965)
Box, c. 1916-25, exterior in oil paint on primed cardboard, interior lined with paper
CRP057
Born in Antwerp, he was the most famous Belgian pioneer of abstract painting and sculpture. He studied at the Academies of Fine Arts in Antwerp and Brussels. From 1914 to 1918 he lived in the Netherlands; in 1917 he exhibited at the Cercle Hollando-Belge. He would later create purely geometric abstract works; although his grid-like compositions may appear arbitrary, they are determined by mathematical relationships. He then met the Belgian futurist Schmalzigaug and Mondrian, Van der Leck and Van Doesburg. In 1924 he published his pamphlet L’Art et son avenir. In 1931 he exhibited at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and was elected vice-president of the association of avant-garde artists Abstraction-Création. In 1936 he took part in the exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art at the MoMA. He exhibited with Bill and Antoine Pevsner at the Kunsthaus in Zurich in 1949. He celebrated his 75th birthday with a solo exhibition at the Suzanne Bollag Gallery in Zurich; in 1962 an extensive retrospective was presented at the new Marlborough Gallery in London; since then there have been many others. His work can be seen in countless public collections: the Art Institute of Chicago, the Groeningemuseum in Bruges, Kröller-Müller in Otterlo, the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Berardo Collection in Lisbon, MoMA in New York, the Fine Arts Museum of Ghent, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Antwerp and Brussels, the Guggenheim in New York and the Tate Modern in London.
Provenance: Louis E. Stern, prestigious American collector and philanthropist, born in Russia. His Louis E. Stern Foundation choose the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1962 to house a part of his collection. Stern was a member of the board of directors of this museum from 1950 until his death.
The box was inherited by Stern’s sister and later by successive members of her family.
13 Georges Vantongerloo (Belgian,1886-1965)
Construction, c. 1917, teak
CRP058
14 Edmond van Dooren (Belgian, 1896-1965)
Impression de ville, Londres 1919, oil on canvas
CRP062
A painter and graphic designer, born in Antwerp. In 1911 he entered the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, where he surprised with his daring use of colour. His first works, from 1914, are Impressionist landscapes en plein air. But he was more interested in form than content; in the Academy he befriended Jozef Peeters and in 1916-1919 they found a shared passion for depicting futuristic metropolises, in paintings prefiguring the images of the film Metropolis by Fritz Lang (1927). They also developed a kind of Symbolist and Romantic style related to their worship of Wagner’s music. Influenced by Robert Delaunay, Van Dooren’s work became increasingly abstract. In 1918 he founded with Peeters the Modern Art group, with the participation of Cockx, Léonard and Maes; they made contact with Der Sturm and organised three art congresses accompanied by exhibitions. He used the linocut technique, which favours geometric abstraction. However, his art evolved towards visions of a futuristic utopia, often suggesting a worship of machines. His futuristic imagery prefigured many Spielberg films. He exhibited in Breda and Antwerp (1956 and 1963), and since the 1970s his work has been included in numerous exhibitions on the Belgian avant-garde, including Modernisme. L’art abstrait belge et l’Europe (Ghent Fine Arts Museum, 2013). His works can be seen in this museum and in Antwerp, among others.
15 Gustav Wunderwald (German, 1882-1945)
Grunewaldstrasse, Berlin-Westend, 1918, oil on canvas
CRP096
Born in Cologne. He began as an apprentice with Wilhelm Kuhn; in 1899-1900 he worked painting sets for many theatres in Germany and abroad, and for the Berlin Opera. After World War I he settled in Berlin; he painted scenes of life in the neighbourhoods of this city in the New Objectivity style. In 1927 he began to exhibit urban scenes and landscapes, but had to stop with the rise to power of the Nazis; he survived by colouring films. Once the war was over, he did not have the opportunity to return to his profession, as he died from drinking contaminated water in the chaos of 1945 Berlin.
16 Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (German, 1884-1976)
Untitled, 1910-11, textile
CRP034
A painter and engraver celebrated for his expressionist landscapes and engravings, he was born in Rottluff (Saxony, Germany) and began studying architecture in Dresden, where he met Kirchner and Heckel. In 1905 both moved to Dresden to study and paint; together they formed the expressionist group Die Brücke and presented their first exhibition in Leipzig. He added ‘Rottluff’ to his name, which was the name of his native town. In works such as Windy Day (1907) the transition from his early style can be seen, to the mature style of his works such as Self Portrait with Monocle (1910), characterised by daring dissonant colours. In 1911 he moved to Berlin; numerous works from this period reveal his new interest in Cubism. When the Nazis came to power he was forbidden from painting and expelled from the Prussian Academy of Arts; in 1937 many of his paintings were removed from museums and some were included in the exhibition Degenerate Art. In 1947 he was hired as a professor at the University of the Arts in Berlin. Germany paid tribute to him with numerous retrospectives and in 1956 he was awarded the Pour le Mérite medal, Prussia’s highest distinction. In 1964 he was the main promoter of the Brücke Museum in Berlin, inaugurated in 1967 with the works donated by him and other members of the group. His works can be seen at the MoMA, Los Angeles County Museum, the Muscarelle Museum of Art (Williamsburg), the Museum am Theaterplatz (Chemnitz), etc.
The work was commissioned to the artist Wilhelm Niemeyer, from Hamburg, whose descendants lent it to the Landesmuseum Schleswig-Holstein until 1999; in 2008 they sold it (Christie’s, London, Old Master, Modern and Contemporary Prints); it was acquired by Ronny van de Velde, from Antwerp, who sold it in 2012 (De Vuyst, Lokeren, May 12, 2012, Oude Meesters, Moderne en Hedendaagse Kunst) to his present owner.
After being labelled as a “degenerate artist” and forbidden from artistic creation, his works were stolen by Nazi civil servants, hidden (many reappeared in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg,where they stayed), burnt or sold in auction in Switzerland. Art historians agree that he was one of the most important German expressionists. Schmidt-Rottluff did not consider himself to be only a painter, sculptor and engraver; he was also interested in applied arts, perhaps motivated by the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk or total work of art. It was maybe during his stay in Hardanger Fiord, in Norway, in the summer of 1911, and possibly by influence of popular Norwegian art, when he created his first works of this kind; he started to exhibit them that year and the next one at a show in Cologne, one of whose organisers, Wilhelm Niemeyer -a teacher in Hamburg Kunstgewerbeschule and driving force of the modernisation of the German applied arts-, was one of the first collectors who bought works by the artist in this modality, among them this textile. Schmidt-Rottluff’s most important design project was commissioned by Rosa Schapire in 1921 for the interior of his appartement in Osterbekstrasse, Hamburg; the project, which included furniture, carpets and various wooden and metal objects, was partially confiscated and sold as “degenerate art” by the Nazi governement and partially destroyed in the bombings of the II World War.
17 Karel Maes (Belgian, 1900-1974)
Construction, c. 1925, exotic wood
CRP134
Born in Mol (Belgium), painter and designer of applied arts, he belongs to the first generation of Belgian abstract artists. He attended the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, where he met Flouquet, Magritte and Servranckx. Once the war was over, he experimented with Neo-Impressionism, Futurism and Post-Cubism; he soon rejected figuration in favour of geometric and biomorphic art. In 1920 he joined the avant-garde group Art Centre in Antwerp; that year he took part in the Exposition Internationale d’Art Moderne in Geneva with Cockx, Magritte and Peeters, in 1923 in Les arts belges d’esprit nouveau, at the Palais d’Egmont in Brussels, and in 1925 in the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Arts in Monza. In 1922 he signed (as the only Belgian) the De Stijl manifesto. He was co-founder of the revolutionary group 7 Arts. In 1927, an article in the eponymous magazine described his work as la plastique pure, a categorically concrete art, an extreme evolution of Cubism. At that time he was teaching at the Bauhaus. Retrospectives have been dedicated to him: Antwerp 1992, Brussels 2007. He has work in the Archives of Modern Architecture in Brussels, the MoMA in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent, and in the Lakenhal Museum in Leiden, the Tate Modern in London and many others.
On the back, the monogram KM, bottom right, and the wax seal of the last owner’s family upper right. Herman Maes, the artist’s grandson and trustee of his family record, has confirmed the authenticity of the work. From Karel Maes’ estate it passed to Pieter Albertyn, from Antwerp.
18 Karel Maes (Belgian, 1900-1974)
Untitled c. 1923, oil on wood panel
CRP132
Signed on the back, bottom right: KM. On the verso it bears the inscription in pencil H vd Velde.
The painting is accompanied by an authenticity certificate issued Herman Maes, the artist’s grandson. Provenance: Piet Maes, the artist’s son; inherited by Herman Maes; later, from Walter Daems, St. Truiden (Flanders), Belgium.
19 Georg Kolbe (German, 1877-1947)
Henry van de Velde, 1913, bronze
CRP037
Born in Waldheim (Germany), he studied at the School of Applied Arts in Dresden, then at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and spent six months at the Académie Julian in Paris. In 1898 he moved to Rome and became interested in sculpture. At the beginning of the 20th century he dedicated himself above all to the idealised nude, which he moulded and twisted, clearly influenced by Rodin and Maillol. In 1903 he settled in Berlin, becoming a member of the Sezession, and in 1913 he moved to the Freie Sezession. He volunteered for the Army in 1915, where he was commissioned to design war memorials. In 1919 he was elected a member of the Academy of Berlin. His work from the 1930s has a more heroic monumentality that attracted the Nazi elites, and he became part of the structure of the Reich Chamber of Culture.
20 Marthe Donas (Belgian, 1885-1967)
Le Tango, 1920, India ink on paper
CRP071
Born in Antwerp. Following the suggestion of her friend Van Doesburg, to avoid her gender colouring people’s perception of her art, she also signed works as Tour d’Onasky or Tour Donas. According to Katherine Dreier, founder of the legendary Société Anonyme, she was “Belgium’s first abstract painter”. She was educated at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp; in 1916 she studied stained glass making in Ireland. André Lothe’s exhibition in Paris introduced her to Cubism. Her first fully abstract and Post-Cubist works date from 1917. She was also a precursor of Surrealism. In 1918 she joined the famous Section D’Or in Paris, which was inspired by Cubism and Orphism. Donas’ greatest contribution to modern art is to have been the first person to push Cubism into abstraction. In 1919, Van Doesburgh published several articles on her in De Stijl, placing her among the protagonists of modern art. In 1920 she exhibited in Der Sturm, Herwarth Walden’s gallery and Berlin’s avant-garde centre; all her works were bought by Walden and Katherine Dreier, who, advised by Marcel Duchamp, gathered an impressive collection of masterpieces of the international avant-garde, the core of the collections of the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven and MoMA New York. She exhibited again at Der Sturm in 1923. The Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels presented a retrospective of her in 1960. Her productions have been shown at the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, the Von der Heydt in Wuppertal, the Belgian Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels and Antwerp, and the Tate Modern in London. In cooperation with the Yale University Art Gallery and the Archipenko Foundation of Bearsville (New York), the Ghent Museum of Fine Arts presented a major exhibition of her work in 2016.
The artist felt intrigued by movement and the play with convex and concave shapes, by diagonals and the alternation of angular and rounded elements. All this and her fascination for dance led her in 1917 to work on the subject of tango until the complete stripping and the reduction of figures to pure geometry in 1920.
21 Marthe Donas (Belgian, 1885-1967)
Le Tango, Der Sturm, 1920, magazine front cover titled, signed and dated by the artist
CRP072
22 Marthe Donas (Belgian, 1885-1967)
Nature morte ‘K’, c. 1917-1918, oil on canvas
CRP068
23 Marthe Donas (Belgian, 1885-1967)
Le livre d’images, c. 1918, oil on plaster and cardboard
CRP069
Signed in oil by the artist bottom near right: Tour Donas. On the back, inscription in oil bay the artist N:16/Le livre d’images par/Tour Donas, as well as two rectangular labels in paper.
Marthe Donas met Alexander Archipenko in 1917. The revolutionary shaped paintings by Belgian artist show the influence of the Russian’s sculpture-paintings, probably inspired by Russian icons. Donas describe the technique she used in these paintings, created in his capital years 1917 and 1919, as facture épaisse en relief. However, whereas Archipenko’s sculpture-paintings, the same as the Russian icons, have conventional quadrangular backgrounds, Donas eliminates the background and so creates the first shaped paintings in the history of western art, which anticipate those of American pop art in the 1960s (Jim Dine, James Rosenquist and Tom Wesselmann). Besides, these works have the same irregular shapes of the things represented and so they become objects, object-paintings. Donas composed his painting following the silhouette of an egg, symbol of maternity, its subject.
24 Marthe Donas (Belgian, 1885-1967)
Adam et Eve, 1927, mixed media assemblage
CRP076
Signed an dated on the back, bottom right: Donas 1927. The artist sold it to Maurits Bilcke, famous Belgian art critic, in 1961. The Marthe Donas Foundation confirmed the authenticity and date of the painting, included by the artist in the inventory of her work for the year 1927. Her daughter, Françoise Franke van Meir, confirmed them as well and remembers having seen the work at home when she was a child.
25 Marthe Donas (Belgian, 1885-1967)
Nature morte à la cuillère, 1920, graphite on paper
CRP074
26 Marthe Donas (Belgian, 1885-1967)
Pot de Cinéraires, 1923, mixed media on panel
CRP075
Signed and dated on the back, upper right: Pot de Cinéraires/Donas/Sceaux avril 1923.
