Sale: 393 / Post War/Contemporary Art, June 09. 2012 in Munich Lot 214

 
Emil Schumacher - Timra


214
Emil Schumacher
Timra, 1989.
Oil
Estimate:
€ 30,000 / $ 32,400
Sold:
€ 74,420 / $ 80,373

(incl. surcharge)
Timra. 1989.
Oil and sand on cardboard, laid on cardboard.
Signed and dated lower left. 73,5 x 101,5 cm (28,9 x 39,9 in).

This work's authenticity has kindly been confirmed orally by Dr. Ulrich Schumacher, Hagen. We are grateful for his kind support in cataloging this lot.

PROVENANCE: Galerie Pels-Leusden, Berlin.
Collection Hubertus Wald, Hamburg.

EXHIBITION: Emil Schumacher - Neue Bilder, Galerie Hans Strelow, Düsseldorf 1989.
Emil Schumacher - Works from the Years 1955 - 1990, travelling exhibition 1992: Galerie Utermann, Dortmund; Galerie Neumann, Düsseldorf; Galerie Pels-Leusden, Berlin and Galerie Thomas, Munich (with illu p. 69).
Emil Schumacher Retrospective, travelling exhibition 1997/1998: Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris; Hamburg Kunsthalle, Hamburg and Haus der Kunst, Munich (with illu., no p., with label on rear of frame).
Collection Wald. Masterpieces of 20t Century Painting, Hamburger Kunsthalle, 17 September - 23 November, 2003.

LITERATURE: Altenmüller, Hartwig et al: Die Sammlung Hubertus und Renate Wald, Hamburg 1998, p. 148 (with illu. p. 149).

Emil Schumacher, born in the Westphalian town of Hagen in 1912, began a three-year degree at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Dortmund when he was 20 years old. He started working as an independent artist in 1935 and founded the artist and exhibition association "junger westen" in 1947 together with a few other artists. The style of his work changed drastically in 1950. He abandoned painting objects and turned towards the expressive power of painting alone. Color itself gradually became the decisive element of his works. This biographical artistic process happened during a period, which was determined by the French École de Paris, Tachism and American Action Painting. While abstraction itself was typical of this period, it also became a typical aspect of Emil Schumacher's personal style. During the late 1960s and early 1970s Schumacher experimented with a rigorous type of action painting, which is reflected above all in his "Hammerbilder" (Hammer Paintings). The injury and damage to the picture support was to him a means of employing destruction itself as a pictorial phenomenon in art. After exhibiting at the documenta III in Kassel in 1964 he created extremely large works, which manifest an extreme painterly freedom. This phase lasted until the 1980s.

"It is not enough to say: this color is red, this color is also red material, palpable, tactile material. It is important to overcome their sequaciousness. Only then it takes on character.“ (From: Emil Schumacher, "Aphorismen", 1972, quoted after: Joachim Büchner, "Farbe und Materie, Ausdruck und Form – Wandlungen von Wirklichkeit“, in: Kritisches Lexikon der Gegenwartskunst, entry on Emil Schumacher, p. 3). In his material pictures, just as in our paintign "Timra“, Schumacher allows the colro this freedom, he lets it take on character. Color becomes palpable in his works, both optically as well as haptically. In order to attain the greatest measure of materiality possible, Schumacher mixes the paint with sand, before he applies it thickly to the image carries. At the same time the artist inspires the observer to numerous ways of interpretation and association.

His latest works of the 1990s, with figurative reminiscences, have clearly overcome the contrast between abstraction and the figurative.
Schumacher became internationally known and praised around the middle of the 1950s as one of the most important artists of the Informel. He was awarded numerous international prizes, of which the Guggenheim Award in New York in 1958 was only the beginning. He was appointed professor at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg in the same year, accepted a post as professor in Karlsruhe in 1966 and taught as a guest professor at the university in Minneapolis/USA in 1967 for one year. The Deutscher Bundestag honoured him in 1998 by commissioning a mural for the Reichstag building in Berlin. Emil Schumacher died in San José on 4 October 1999, one year after the large retrospective exhibition in Munich. [KH].




214
Emil Schumacher
Timra, 1989.
Oil
Estimate:
€ 30,000 / $ 32,400
Sold:
€ 74,420 / $ 80,373

(incl. surcharge)