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Lot Essay
Hermann Gerlinger has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
‘Concerning myself I know that I have no program, only the inner longing to grasp what I see and feel and to find its purest expression. At this point I only know that these are things I come close to through art, not intellectually nor by means of the word.’ (Karl Schmidt Rottluff “Das Neue Programm: Antwort auf eine Rundfrage über künstlerische Programme”, Kunst und Kunstler, vol 12, Berlin 1914, p. 308)
Painted circa 1914-15, Mädchen mit rotem Kragen (Woman with a Red Collar) is an extraordinarily forceful and dynamic portrait painted shortly after the outbreak of the Great War in the brief interim before Karl Schmidt-Rottluff began his military service in 1915. An elegant portrait of an unknown woman, comprised almost entirely of a series of stark, jagged, angular and interpenetrative planes of rich, vibrant colour that combine into one imposing singular presence, the painting belongs to a series of exceptionally strong portraits made at this time in which the artist translated simple form, colour, line into an astonishingly pure and elemental means of expression. With the aim of conveying the raw, primal essence of his subjects in as simple, direct and forceful a manner as possible, and drawing on the influence of both African and Oceanic sculpture as well as his recent practice of making woodcut-prints, Schmidt-Rottluff responded to the urgency of the times by seeking to lock onto the vitalizing presence of the human figure in what was an otherwise near-abstract rendering of a distinctly natural and often landscape environment.
‘I now feel strong pressure to create something as intense as possible’, Schmidt-Rottluff wrote of this central period for his work. ‘The war has swept away for me all that is past, all appears weak, and I suddenly see things in their awesome power. I never liked that sort of art which is a beautiful fascination for the eyes and nothing more, and I feel in an elementary way that one must grasp even more powerful forms so powerful that they can withstand the impact of a people’s lunacy.’ (Karl Schmidt Rottluff undated letter of 1914 to Ernst Beyersdorff, cited in German Expressionist Sculpture exh. cat. Los Angeles, 1984, p. 183)
Rooting his formerly more sensuous and vibrant palette in a sequence of bold, rich but deliberately more earthy tones, Schmidt-Rottluff has, in this work, created a dynamic, elegant and seemingly energized picture in which a persuasive sense of a universal and underlying harmony between the figure and its environment is provided through a masterful and almost architectonic use of simplified form, line and colour.
‘Concerning myself I know that I have no program, only the inner longing to grasp what I see and feel and to find its purest expression. At this point I only know that these are things I come close to through art, not intellectually nor by means of the word.’ (Karl Schmidt Rottluff “Das Neue Programm: Antwort auf eine Rundfrage über künstlerische Programme”, Kunst und Kunstler, vol 12, Berlin 1914, p. 308)
Painted circa 1914-15, Mädchen mit rotem Kragen (Woman with a Red Collar) is an extraordinarily forceful and dynamic portrait painted shortly after the outbreak of the Great War in the brief interim before Karl Schmidt-Rottluff began his military service in 1915. An elegant portrait of an unknown woman, comprised almost entirely of a series of stark, jagged, angular and interpenetrative planes of rich, vibrant colour that combine into one imposing singular presence, the painting belongs to a series of exceptionally strong portraits made at this time in which the artist translated simple form, colour, line into an astonishingly pure and elemental means of expression. With the aim of conveying the raw, primal essence of his subjects in as simple, direct and forceful a manner as possible, and drawing on the influence of both African and Oceanic sculpture as well as his recent practice of making woodcut-prints, Schmidt-Rottluff responded to the urgency of the times by seeking to lock onto the vitalizing presence of the human figure in what was an otherwise near-abstract rendering of a distinctly natural and often landscape environment.
‘I now feel strong pressure to create something as intense as possible’, Schmidt-Rottluff wrote of this central period for his work. ‘The war has swept away for me all that is past, all appears weak, and I suddenly see things in their awesome power. I never liked that sort of art which is a beautiful fascination for the eyes and nothing more, and I feel in an elementary way that one must grasp even more powerful forms so powerful that they can withstand the impact of a people’s lunacy.’ (Karl Schmidt Rottluff undated letter of 1914 to Ernst Beyersdorff, cited in German Expressionist Sculpture exh. cat. Los Angeles, 1984, p. 183)
Rooting his formerly more sensuous and vibrant palette in a sequence of bold, rich but deliberately more earthy tones, Schmidt-Rottluff has, in this work, created a dynamic, elegant and seemingly energized picture in which a persuasive sense of a universal and underlying harmony between the figure and its environment is provided through a masterful and almost architectonic use of simplified form, line and colour.