Sale: 520 / Evening Sale, June 18. 2021 in Munich Lot 341

 

341
Heinrich Hoerle
Fabrikarbeiterin, 1926.
Mixed media. Oil, charcoal and color pen on pap...
Estimate:
€ 80,000 / $ 86,400
Sold:
€ 187,500 / $ 202,500

(incl. surcharge)
Fabrikarbeiterin. 1926.
Mixed media. Oil, charcoal and color pen on paper, laminated on panel.
Backes Öl/no.24 (listed as "verschollen" (lost)). Monogrammed "h" in upper right. With hand-written date, title and inscription, as well as with the artist's address stamp on the original backing panel. 40 x 36 cm (15.7 x 14.1 in).
[JS].
• Hoerle confronts us with the toil-stricken physiognomy of the depicted person in an unsparing poignancy and objectivity that reminds of Otto Dix's contemporaneous creation, however, it differs in terms of its formal stylization.
• From the days of the "Kölner Progressive", who showed works in group exhibitions in, among others, Amsterdam, Paris and Chicago since 1924.
• Currently Heinrich Hoerle's works are shown in the grand retrospective "Vision und Schrecken der Moderne. Industrie und künstlerischer Aufbruch" (2020/2021) at the Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal.
• In 1936 Heinrich Hoerle died of tuberculosis at the age of 40, leaving behind a small but high-quality oeuvre.
• In context of the National Socialist's "Degenerate Art" campaign 21 works by Heinrich Hoerle were removed from German museums, and some of them were destroyed
.

PROVENANCE: Private collection Europe (since 2010, Van Ham December 2, 2010).

EXHIBITION: Richmod Galerie, Cologne 1926, no p., cat. illu. (here dated 1926).

LITERATURE: Das elegante Köln. Halbmonatsschrift für Mode, Kunst, Kultur, year 1928, issue 1, p. 4 (with black-and-white illu.).
Hans Schmitt-Rost, Heinrich Hoerle, Monographie zur Rheinisch-Westfälischen Kunst der Gegenwart, vol. 29, Recklinghausen 1965, p. 41 (with black-and-white illu.).
Van Ham, Modern and Contemporary Art, auction on December 2, 2010, lot no. 75 (with illu.).
"It must have been at some point in the early twenties when I first came across one of Heinrich Hoerle's paintings, and I was fascinated right away. I had never seen anything like it [.] The picture followed a very strict composition, it had two tubes looming large like chimneys, or perhaps even cannons, and a face in frontal view. He seemd to have conceived the color fields with divider and ruler. [.] No sentimentality, no "peinture", no effect gained from the color application. Through its means the painting was sort of naked, which would remain characteristic of Hoerle's entire mature creation."
Hans Schmitt-Rost, Kölnische Rundschau and Bonner Rundschau, August 29, 1970.

Heinrich Hoerle's painting - The rediscovery of a a small and high-class oeuvre
The catalog raisonné of the Cologne painter Heinrich Hoerle lists just 96 oil paintings, 28 of which are listed as missing. The painting "Fabrikarbeiter"(Factory Worker), which was only rediscovered in 2010 and which is one of the highlights of Hoerle's oeuvre due to its formal clarity and socio-critical ruthlessness, was still considered lost in the year the catalog raisonné was published. Hoerle, along with the photographer August Sander and the painter Franz Wilhelm Seiwert, was one of the protagonists of the group "Kölner Progressive Künstler". His outstanding work, which unfortunately fell into oblivion in the 1970s, found late deserved appreciation in the exhibition “Köln progressiv 1920-33. Seiwert - Hoerle – Arntz" at the Ludwig Museum Cologne in 2008. Before the National Socialist’s campaign "Degenerate Art", to which some of Hoerle's paintings fell victim, his works - disturbing and at the same time inspiring due to their reduced clarity – had already been represented in the collections of numerous German museums and in international exhibitions. Today a large part of the work is in the collections of the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, and the Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal.

From Dada to New Objectivity - The "Factory Worker" as a socio-critical masterpiece
After the First World War Hoerle was initially part of the Cologne Dada group around Max Ernst and Johannes Bargeld, but soon broke away from Ernst's international Dada efforts, as he was striving for a more nationally oriented, more political art. In 1919 Hoerle became friends with his artist colleague Anton Räderscheidt, who initially founded the group "Stupid" with Heinrich Hoerle and Hans Arp and finally in 1932 the "Gruppe 32" together with Hoerle, Seiwert and Heinrich Maria Davringhausen. As far as his style was concerned Hoerle fused clear, reduced pictorial elements of New Objectivity, Constructivism and French Cubism, but in terms of content he showed a socio-critical tendency reminiscent of Otto Dix's work. "Farbrikarbeiterin" is an early and outstanding document of these artistic endeavors, which also find expression in the relentless directness of Hoerle's "Krüppelmappe" (Cripple Portfolio) and in his paintings of people stricken by the terrors of the First World War.
De-individualization through war and industrialization - Hoerle, Dix and Grosz
With the facial features as signs of a burdensome life, Hoerle's "Fabrikarbeiterin" shows clear parallels to Dix's famous work "Bildnis der Eltern", of which he created two versions (Kunstmuseum Basel / Sprengel Museum, Hanover) and to his painting "Frau mit Kind" at the State Art Collections, Dresden, whereas Hoerle, owing to his stronger stylization and the strict formal reduction, significantly emancipates himself from the realistic model. Hoerle's "Fabrikarbeiterin"also shows clear parallels to the contemporaneous works by the Berlin artist George Groszs, who in his painting "Grauer Tag" (1921, Nationalgalerie Berlin) stages the unrelated typifications of a faceless worker, a war cripple and a magistrate for the welfare of war victims in front of smoking factory chimneys. Just as it was the case with Dix and Grosz, to Hoerle the 1920s were not the "Roaring Twenties". Instead Hoerle confronts us with images of a lost generation of war cripples and factory workers who - as a consequence of their de-individualized work - appear like automatons. [JS]



341
Heinrich Hoerle
Fabrikarbeiterin, 1926.
Mixed media. Oil, charcoal and color pen on pap...
Estimate:
€ 80,000 / $ 86,400
Sold:
€ 187,500 / $ 202,500

(incl. surcharge)