Mitteldeutscher Meister im Kugelstoßen Seraidaris

During the 1930s, Conrad Felixmüller painted numerous canvases depicting the village of Klotzsche, where his family lived, on the northern outskirts of Dresden. The newly furnished 50-metres outdoor pool became a notable attraction for Dresdeners when Felixmüller created Mitteldeutscher Meister im Kugelstoßen Seraidaris, a sun-drenched poolside scene that is filled with fresh colours and a gleeful energy. The man in the foreground is Ioannis Seraidaris, the then well-known German Athlete from Dresden, champion in the disciplines of Shot-put and Discus. The monumental and classical form of his pose heighten his discernible confidence. When contrasted with his idyllic surroundings, his expression and form serve to illustrate and emphasise an ideal model of modern aesthetics, creating a sense of frivolity that is both wonderfully fashionable and unmistakably Kitsch.

Painted in 1931, this work exemplifies the development of the artist’s personal style and German art at the time. In 1919, Felixmüller founded the Dresden Secession together with Lasar Segall, Otto Dix and Otto Griebel. Thereafter, he gradually moved away from the expressionist and cubist schools, adopting a more realistic style and subject matter, centring on a form of portraiture closely related to the art of the New Objectivity school. Abandoning philosophical objectivity, this new style reflected a turn towards a practical and rather business like engagement with the world, understood by Germans as intrinsically American, [C. Dennis, German Post-Expressionism: The Art of the Great Disorder 1918-1924. Pennsylvania, 1999.] and reflective of the then emerging tendency in modern German art towards a starker, more sober and objective form of representation.