Sale: 541 / Contemporary Art Day Sale, June 09. 2023 in Munich Lot 104

 

104
Emil Schumacher
Für Bernhard, 1956.
Oil on cardboard on board
Estimate:
€ 60,000 / $ 64,800
Sold:
€ 73,660 / $ 79,552

(incl. surcharge)
Für Bernhard. 1956.
Oil on cardboard on board.
Lower right signed and dated. Signed and inscribed with the artist's address on the reverse. 100 x 79.5 cm (39.3 x 31.2 in).

• Early work from the sought-after 1950s.
• In the mid-1950s, Schumacher succeeded in staging color as matter on the canvas, a discovery that was decisive for his entire painterly oeuvre.
• Impressive early exhibition history: "Für Bernhard" was on display in the "Gruppe 53" exhibition the year after it was made, which was so important for Schumacher, it was also part of the solo exhibitions at the Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover, and at the Westfälische Kunstverein in Münster in 1961 and 1962.
• Comparable works from the 1950s are part of important museum collections like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Nationalgalerie Berlin and the Kunsthalle Hamburg.
• In 1958, Schumacher received the Guggenheim Award, New York (National Section Germany) and took part in the XXIX Venice Biennale, followed by a participation in the documenta II in Kassel in 1959
.

The work is registered in the archive with the number 0/3.984 and will be included into the fortcoming catalog raisonné. We are garteful to Mr Rouven Lotz, director of the Emil Schumacher Museum, Hagen, for his kind expert advice.

PROVENANCE: Bernhard Minetti Collection, Berlin (since 1956, directly from the artist).
German private collection (acquired from the above in 1999, Villa Grisebach auctions, Berlin, November 26, 1999).

EXHIBITION: Gruppe 53, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, January 20 - February 24, 1957.
Emil Schumacher, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover, October 27 - December 3, 1961.
Emil Schumacher, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster, January 20 - February 18, 1962 (with the exhibition label on the reverse).
Emil Schumacher. Werke aus sieben Jahrzehnten, Herforder Kunstverein im Daniel-Pöppelmann-Haus, Städtisches Museum, Herford, May 5 - July 8, 2001.
Auf dem Weg zur Avantgarde. Künstler der Gruppe 53, Museum der Stadt Ratingen, September 14 - November 2, 2003.
Farben sind Feste für die Augen. Emil Schumacher zum 100., Ernst Barlach Haus, Hamburg, October 14, 2012 - January 27, 2013.
Emil Schumacher - Die Sammlung Hildegard und Ferdinand Kosfeld, Ketterer Kunst, Berlin, December 18, 2020 - March 6, 2021.

LITERATURE: Villa Grisebach Auktionen, Berlin, 75th auction, Select Works, November 26, 1999, lot 79 (with full-page color illu.).
Achim Sommer (ed.), Emil Schumacher. Werke aus sieben Jahrzehnten, ex. cat. Kunsthalle in Emden / Herforder Kunstverein im Daniel-Pöppelmann-Haus, Städtisches Museum Herford, Bielefeld 2001 (no illu.).
Marie-Luise Otten, Auf dem Weg zur Avantgarde, in: ex. cat. Museum der Stadt Ratingen 2003 (with color illu., p. 127).
Jens Christian Jensen u. a. (ed.), Farben sind Feste für die Augen. Emil Schumacher zum 100., Cologne 2012 (with color illu. plate 1).

Schumacher's work is characterized by an unusual materiality, color and a form liberated from the motif. Around 1950, the artist turned to non-representational painting for the first time and in the years that followed, also under the influence of French Informel, created haptically fascinating, almost sculptural works with spontaneous, very lively expression. "In 1951 I made first attempts at the material-structural in painting. Color as material, as matter, as something tangible began to interest me. [.] It is not a picture of something, but through something." (Emil Schumacher. 1957, quoted from: ex. cat. Emil Schumacher. Closer to the earth than the stars, Sprengel Museum Hannover, 2007)
As in the early, colorful work offered here, the artist mixes unusual materials with his paints, using e. g. sand or scraps of fabric to increase the plasticity and the haptic appeal of the sometimes grainy, sometimes rough or impasto surface. In order to "be able to determine the consistency of the paint as a material, I make it myself from paint powder and binding agents. [.] I love its impasto character, I have to be able to touch and feel the paint. All the more exciting when it is grainy and thick. It must solidify into a [.] mass that can be scratched open." (Emil Schumacher, 1992, quoted from: ex. cat. Emil Schumacher. Retrospektive, Ostfildern 1997, p. 130)

For its symbiosis of relief-like, impasto materiality of the application of the paint, the artistic, almost destructive treatment of the surface structure with scratches, the strong, lively colors and, last but not least, the painterly lines, the present work is a symbol of Schumacher's informal and at the same time visionary painting from his sought-after early creative period in the mid-1950s. [CH]



104
Emil Schumacher
Für Bernhard, 1956.
Oil on cardboard on board
Estimate:
€ 60,000 / $ 64,800
Sold:
€ 73,660 / $ 79,552

(incl. surcharge)