Vente: 533 / Modern Art Day Sale and Gerlinger Collection 10 décembre 2022 à Munich Lot 476

 

476
Karl Hofer
Meeresstille, Um 1912.
Oil on canvas
Estimation:
€ 25,000 / $ 27,000
Résultat:
€ 31,250 / $ 33,750

( frais d'adjudication compris)
Meeresstille. Um 1912.
Oil on canvas.
Wohlert 212. Lower right monogrammed "CH." (in ligature). With an old label numbered "27. / 111." on the reverse and numbered by a hand other than that of the artist. 35 x 54 cm (13.7 x 21.2 in).
[KT].
• Excellent provenance, from the collection of Konrad and Annalise Hager, Hamburg, who were close friends of the artist.
• For the first time on the international auction market.
• From the artist's early creative period during his time in Paris, where he lived between 1908 and 1913
• In this early period, the artist's interest in the human body in a dialog with tradition and Modernism between Hans von Marées, Paul Cézanne and Picasso began to show.
• In this work Hofer created a dreamful and calm atmopshere realized with his soft and wavy brushwork
.

PROVENANCE: Private collection Bavaria.
Private collection North Rhine-Westphalia (until 1958, Stuttgarter Kunstkabinett November 21/22, 1958).
Collection Konrad and Annalise Hager, Hamburg (acquired from the above).
Private collection USA (obtained from the family).

EXHIBITION: Carl Hofer, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Gustav Schraegele, Kunstsalon Ludwig Schames, Frankfurt am Main, March - April 1915, no. 10.
Mai-Ausstellung, Kunsthalle Basel, May 1916, p. 10, no. 117.
Carl Hofer, Erna Pinner, Albert Spethmann, Kunstsalon Ludwig Schames, Frankfurt am Main, June 1917, no. 13.
Gemälde und Zeichnungen von Karl Hofer, Kunstsalon Emil Richter, Dresden, 1917 [?], no. 14.

LITERATURE: Stuttgarter Kunstkabinett Roman Norbert Ketterer, auction 15, May 29, 1952, lot 1893.
Kunsthaus Lempertz, Cologne, auction 441, 1954, lot 141.
Stuttgarter Kunstkabinett Roman Norbert Ketterer, auction 32, November 21/22, 1958, lot 366 (illu. on plate 16).
Kunstpreis-Verzeichnis, 14, Munich 1958/59, p. 312 (here with the title "Zwei weibliche Akte am Strand").

"I possessed the romantic, I sought the classical," is how Karl Hofer describes his artistic development. This process is particularly noticeable in works from his early creative period. After studying at the Karlsruhe Academy, financial support provided by the Swiss industrialist and patron Theodor Reinhart enabled him to move to Rome in 1903, where he set out in search of the classical formal ideal of an ancient mindset. The acquaintance of the art historian Julius Meier-Graefe drew his attention to the Roman works of Hans von Marée, whose figures radiated an elegiac mood and idyllic grace. Also on Meier-Graefe's advice, and following the desire to continue to develop a more painterly and less formally ideal way of expression, he moved to Paris in 1908, the center of the avant-garde movements at the time. In 1907 he saw grand retrospectives of Paul Cézanne at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune and the Salon d'automne that deeply impressed him. Cézanne's central motifs were always the bathers, who merged with nature in perfect harmony. During his stay in Paris, Hofer often traveled to the coast of Northern French, repeatedly to the harbor town of Ambleteuse. Unlike painters prone to an impressionist style, he did not focus on the fashionable summer tourists from the metropolis. Two female figures, bedded on soft cloths in the sand, merge with the seascape surrounding them in the soft brushstroke typical of Hofer's early period. A calm sea behind them, an evening sky, sand hills mimicking wave motion. The scenery seems to be placeless, timeless and floating before the infinite space of the sea. For Hofer, the works of the great French symbolist Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, in which a mood of tranquility, a feeling of vastness and melancholy longing can also be sensed, must certainly have been inspirational for the painting. This also includes the de-saturated color harmony that underscores the lyrical and dreamy atmosphere. Hofer's interest is not in the encounter with reality; in his painting he rather seeks an expression of inner worlds. This early work may be considered a special example of his engagement both with art and motifs of times long past and with the masters of modernism, which Hofer fuses to create his individual poetry. [KT]



476
Karl Hofer
Meeresstille, Um 1912.
Oil on canvas
Estimation:
€ 25,000 / $ 27,000
Résultat:
€ 31,250 / $ 33,750

( frais d'adjudication compris)