Blumenstilleben. Late 1920s.
Watercolor and ink brush.
Signed in lower right. On firm watercolor paper. 50.8 x 35.8 cm (20 x 14 in), the full sheet. [JS].

• Schmidt-Rottluff is the uncontested master of the watercolor among the "Brücke" artists.
• Painterly executed flower still life in expressive liberated colors.
• Sold to a Swiss private collection by the Stuttgarter Kunstkabinett in 1959, ever since family-owned.

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

PROVENANCE: Private collection Northern Germany
Private collection Switzerland (acquired in 1959, Stuttgarter Kunstkabinett, 34th auction, lot 860).
Private collection Southern Germany (inherited from the above).

LITERATURE: Stuttgarter Kunstkabinett Roman Norbert Ketterer, Moderne Kunst, 34th auction, November 20 and 21, 1959, cat. no. 860 (fig. plate 52).

"With his unique method, Schmidt-Rottluff established the watercolor as a genre on par with his paintings. In terms of size, composition and painterly execution, they are of equal rank. For Schmidt-Rottluff, who was formative for German Expressionism with the artist group "Brücke" and who deliberately pursued an anti-academic and spontaneous method guided by sensation, regarding the immediate rendition of what he saw and felt as paramount criteria for an unadulterated expression, the watercolor and its facile and simple handling was the technique of his choice in order to capture his impressions directly >in front of nature<."
Christiane Remm, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Aquarelle, Brücke-Museum Berlin 2011, p. 9.