Mariä Verkündigung. 1919.
Watercolor and gouache with India ink over pencil.
Firmenich 809 A. Signed and dated lower right. On slightly brownish firm wove paper. 37 x 31 cm (14,5 x 12,2 in), the full sheet.
Max Glaeser (1871 - 1931) was a well known enamel producer from the Palatinate. His comprehensive art collection, which later became part of the Palatinate State Museum, comprised works of Imprressionism and paintings by Emil Nolde, Edvard Munch, Max Pechstein und Oskar Kokoschka.

PROVENANCE: Collection Glaeser, Kaiserslautern (till 1959).
Private collection.
Galerie Cazeau-Béraudière, Paris.
Private collection.

EXHIBITION: Heinrich Campendonk 1889-1957, Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern, October-November 1982, cat. no. 53 (with illu.).

After his studies at the School of Kunstgewerbeschule in Krefeld under the Dutch artist Johan-Thorn Prikker Heinrich Campendonk accepted an invitation to Sindelsdorf in Bavaria by Franz Marc and settled there in 1911. Already at that time he found the basic subject of his works: the depiction of harmony of man and beast, Creation, the circle of life. Beside paintings, watercolors, gouaches and first woodcuts came into existence. In Sindelsdorf he got acquainted with the members of the artist group 'Blauer Reiter' and participated in exhibitions their that very same year. Together with this group of artists he also exhibited at the 'Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon' of the 'Sturm', led by Herwarth Walden in Berlin, two years later. His artistic creativity was strongly influenced by Marc, Macke and Kandinsky during these years and had a first climax. A stiff geometrical form language was combined with color in pure complementary contrasts to a dynamic, rhythmic form language. In 1916 Campendonk moved to Seeshaupt at the Starnberger See, from where he traveled extensively. His painting is now formed by softly flowing forms, large areas of intensive light and a lyrical, often fairytale-like mood. Behind glass paintings were also created.

Heinrich Campendonk had first been occupied with the theme of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary in 1917. The painting from that time shows the scene with the approaching angel and Mary. In this later watercolor the scene’s decryption remains entirely open. Nothings hints at the event. Campendonk stylizes the figures and abandons the style that had dominated his earlier works. The fields are clearly defined, just as their color effect is. A color abstraction that can be observed in the blue of Mary’s carnation underlines the formal reduction, their two-dimensional character becomes particularly obvious in this composition. Painting aspects can only be observed in the background. Campendonk, who more and more turned to a certain formalism over the following years, laid the fundaments for his later creation with this work.

In 1926 the artist was appointed professor at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. Campendonk gained artistic recognition since the mid-1920s particularly through doing windows of churches and public buildings (the Landtag and Paulskirche in Duesseldorf, Essener Münster et al.). When he was dismissed from his teaching profession in 1933, he emigrated to Belgium, where he lived in Ostende for the time being, before he accepted a teaching post at the Rijksakademie van beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam in 1935. Campendock did not return to Germany at the end of world war II. He continued his teaching profession and got several orders for glass windows in the Netherlands and in Germany. In 1956 he was awarded the Quellinus-Prize of the city of Amsterdam and was dubbed a knight of the order De Neederlandse Leeuw. Campendonk died in Amsterdam in 1957. [KP/KD]