Sale: 539 / Modern Art Day Sale, June 10. 2023 in Munich Lot 400


400
Alexander Kanoldt
Straßenbild I, 1913.
Oil on fibreboard
Estimate:
€ 35,000 / $ 38,500
Sold:
€ 40,640 / $ 44,704

(incl. surcharge)
Straßenbild I. 1913.
Oil on fibreboard.
Koch 13.2. 73 x 51.3 cm (28.7 x 20.1 in).
A very similar painting with a street scene from 1913 is also in existence (Koch 13.3). There is no clear evidence whether the present painting or the other street scene from 1914 were shown in the exhibition at Fritz Gurlit. [AR].
• Munich townscape in Kanoldt's then characteristic, reduced style.
• During the artist's lifetime in the 1910s, the work was part of several exhibitions, before it went into a private collection where it would remain up until today.
• Townscapes and architecture views count among Kanoldt's key motifs.
• Next to his still lifes, they count among his most sought-after motifs on the international auction market (source: artprice.com).
.

We are grateful to Dr. Michael Koch for his kind expert advice.

PROVENANCE: Private collection Northern Germany (presumably acquired in the 1920s).
Ever since family-owned.

EXHIBITION: Kollektionen Schmidt-Rottluff, Alexander Kanoldt, F. A. Weinzheimer, L. L. Wulff, Kunst-Salon Fritz Gurlitt, Berlin, April 16 - May 10, 1914, presumbaly cat. no. 18.
Herbstausstellung, Vereinigung für Neue Kunst, Frankfurt a. Main, 1917, presumably cat. no. 41.
XII. Sonderausstellung: Neue Münchener Kunst, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover, December 1, 1917 - January 4, 1918, cat. no. 53.
IV. Ausstellung, Neue Secession, Munich, summer 1918, cat. no. 57.

Around 1910 Kanoldt created his first views of Munich in the vicinity of Nikolaiplatz in Schwabing, including our work from 1913. Only a few of these works have survived and are only known from black-and-white illustrations. This is the first time that the present work "Straßenbild I“ (Street Picture I) is shown in color. It shows a section of a street with a kiosk, small walking figures and dark green trees from an elevated point of view. The street’s exact location can’t be identified, it is also possible that the artist composed the street scene from imagination. However, as Michael Koch describes it, the artist's street pictures of this time were not "about an authentic depiction of the local situation, but about the reproduction of a picture from imagination solely guided by the artistic need for expression" (quoted from: Michael Koch, Alexander Kanoldt Catalogue raisonné of the paintings, Munich 2018, p. 22). In the reduction to surfaces and forms, while maintaining a consciously restrained colorfulness, he achieved a synthesis of the his preoccupation with Cubism and with the constructive approaches of Paul Cézanne. Kanoldt's artistic career in Munich was abruptly interrupted by the outbreak of war. In the years from 1914 to 1918 he served in the military. In 1924, during a longer stay in Italy, he created his first multi-perspective architectural landscapes, which represent a new beginning in Kanoldt's work that would ultimately make him one of the most important representatives of New Objectivity. [AR]



400
Alexander Kanoldt
Straßenbild I, 1913.
Oil on fibreboard
Estimate:
€ 35,000 / $ 38,500
Sold:
€ 40,640 / $ 44,704

(incl. surcharge)