Sale: 547 / Modern Art Day Sale, Dec. 09. 2023 in Munich button next Lot 461

 

461
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Tanzschule Wigman, Um 1926.
Gouache over black chalks
Estimate:
€ 20,000 / $ 22,600
Sold:
€ 76,200 / $ 86,105

(incl. surcharge)
Tanzschule Wigman. Um 1926.
Gouache over black chalks.
With the estate stamp of the Kunstmuseums Basel (Lugt 1570 b) and the hand-written registration number "A Da/Be 22" on the reverse. On brownish wove paper. 34 x 48.2 cm (13.3 x 18.9 in), the full sheet. [CH].

• With this multi-figure, colorful depiction, the artist combines important themes of his art: the female nude, dance and movement.
• Dance has played an important role in Kirchner's oeuvre since the scenes from the dance cafés and variety shows in Dresden around 1905.
• In the 1920s, Kirchner met Mary Wigman and Gret Palucca, important dancers of the time, and became intensively involved with modern dance.
• The artist visited the modern, progressive Wigman Ballet School in Dresden during a trip in 1926 (cf., among others, Presler, sketchbook Skb 127).
• In Mary Wigman's expressive dance, Kirchner sees the former program of the "Brücke" artists from 1906 implemented, the direct and unadulterated reproduction of "what urges to create"
.

The present work is documented at the Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Archive, Wichtrach/Bern.

PROVENANCE: Artist's estate (Davos 1938, Kunstmuseum Basel 1946).
Stuttgarter Kunstkabinett Roman Norbert Ketterer, Stuttgart (1954).
Galerie Wolfgang Ketterer, Munich.
Private collection Northern Germany (acquired from the above in 1985).

EXHIBITION: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Gemälde, Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Graphik, Galerie Wolfgang Ketterer, Munich, September 6 - October 26, 1985, cat. no. 97 (color illu. p. 117).

"First great impression today at Mary Wigman. I feel the parallel, as expressed in her dances, in the movement of the masses, which reinforce the individual movement. It is infinitely stimulating and attractive to draw these body movements. [.] Yes, what we suspected has become reality. The new art is here. Mary Wigman unconsciously uses much of the modern pictures and the creation of a modern concept of beauty is at work in her dances as well as in my pictures."
E. L. Kirchner, January 16, 1926, in: Lothar Grisebach (ed.), Davoser Tagebuch, Stuttgart 1998, p. 126.

"I'm now doing a lot of work and drawing every day at the Wigman dance school. This dance gives me a lot, it's very much connected to our modern age."
E. L. Kirchner to his partner Erna Schilling, letter dated February 2, 1926, quoted from: Hans Delfs (ed.), E. L. Kirchner. Der gesamte Briefwechsel, Zurich 2010, no. 1650.




461
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Tanzschule Wigman, Um 1926.
Gouache over black chalks
Estimate:
€ 20,000 / $ 22,600
Sold:
€ 76,200 / $ 86,105

(incl. surcharge)

 


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