Oil on canvas
Monogrammed on verso. 142,5 x 92 cm (56,1 x 36,2 in)
With another painting "Auf der Rennbahn" in same technique on verso. Mounted in iron frame on movable rack.

PROVENANCE: Private collection Berlin.

Following his studies at the Munich Academy of Visual Arts and military service in World War I, Schiestel-Arding went to Worpswede where he was active as a freelance artist. A few years later his painting style had found the balance between a depiction of nature and an expressive urge that is so characteristic of Expressive Realism. However, when a large part of his work was destroyed by a fire in his house in the early 1920s, the entirley broke artist went to Bremen in 1924, where he was eventually committed to an asylum after a nervous breakdown. Soon after Schiestel-Arding picked up painting again and returned to Worpswede in 1926 and showed his works in his first single exhibition a little later. An expressive pictorial language prevailed in his paintings from the 1920s. They are characterized by dynamic strokes of the brush and a vibrant pastose application of the paint. In "Dame im blauen Mantel" (Lady in Blue Coat) all the miseries and the artist‘s tense mental situation seem to have found expression. With her head down and empty eyes the ominous and fragile lady seems to be suffering under the coat’s heaviness. This way Schiestl-Arding delivered an impressive account of his torn emotions. [JS]