Heuschober. 1935.
Brush and India ink drawing, and wash.
Lower left signed, lower right inscribed with the work number "3532". Titled on the reverse. On firm paper. 50 x 70 cm (19.6 x 27.5 in), the full sheet. [CH].

• For the first time on public display during the artist's lifetime.
• One of the early sheets that the artist called "Schwarzblätter" (Black Sheets), in which line and graphic elements dominate owing to the reduced line.
• Ink pen drawings play have played an important role in his creation since the early days of the "Brücke", however, the technique gained increasing dominance as of 1930. As of 1963/64, owing to his declining health, he almost exclsuively made ink pewn drawings.
• For their spirited, at times reduced to a fully monochrome and graphic character, his sheets are reminiscent of Chinese or Japanese models.
• Even though Schmidt-Rottluff was committed to the expressionist color throughout his life, he also showed great mastery in monochrome landscape depictions.
• When the work was made in the mid 1930s, defamation through the Nazis began, in 1937 it featured the exhibition "Degenerate Art" in Munich.
• Gerhard Wietek sees the reason for the stylistic transition in Schmidt-Rottluff's creation "in the dark years of political defamatzion and forced reduction of artistic production" (ex. cat. Stuttgart 1974/75).

The work is registered in the archive of the Karl and Emy Schmidt-Rottluff Foundation, Berlin.

PROVENANCE: Cologne art trade.
Hermann Gerlinger Collection, Würzburg (with the collector's stamp, Lugt 6032).

EXHIBITION: Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Aquarelle und Zeichnungen aus den Jahren 1942-1944, Galerie Hennig, Halle (Saale), January 1949, cat. no. 32 (with illu.).
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Die Schwarzblätter. Ausstellung zum 90. Geburtstag, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Graphische Sammlung, December 1, 1974 - January 26, 1975, cat. no. 40, pp. 46f. (with illu.).
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff Retrospektive, Kunsthalle Bremen, July 16 - September 10, 1989; Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, September 27 - December 3, 1989, cat. no. 294, p. 278 (with illu.).
Schleswig-Holsteinisches Landesmuseum, Schloss Gottorf, Schleswig (permanent loan from the Hermann Gerlinger Collection, 1995-2001).
Kunstmuseum Moritzburg, Halle an der Saale (permanent loan from the Hermann Gerlinger Collection, 2001-2017).
Buchheim Museum, Bernried (permanent loan from the Hermann Gerlinger Collection, 2017-2022).

LITERATURE: Heinz Spielmann (ed.), Die Maler der Brücke. Sammlung Hermann Gerlinger, Stuttgart 1995, p. 412, SHG no. 741 (with illu.).
Hermann Gerlinger, Katja Schneider (eds.), Die Maler der Brücke. Inventory catalog Hermann Gerlinger Collection, Halle (Saale) 2005, p. 115, SHG no. 261 (with illu.).

In good condition. Minimally discolored, predominantly in places of the margins. Edges minimally crimped in places and with isolated kinks in places of edges. Bottom of left and right side margin with a small brownish discoloration.