Distanced, cryptic, and disconnected is how the young Radziwill depicted himself, his young wife, and their friends on canvas. Created the year of the iconic Mannheim exhibition “Neue Sachlichkeit” (New Objectivity), which lent its name to the art movement of the same name during the Weimar Republic, Radziwill's enigmatic painting “Eine Türe öffnet sich” (A Door Opens) is considered one of his first works in the style of this internationally celebrated, fascinating, surreal-realist movement. In 1925, the then 30-year-old Radziwill was not yet featured in the exhibition at the Kunsthalle Mannheim, curated by Gustav Hartlaub, as he was only beginning to explore the style of New Objectivity.



In 1924, Radziwill gradually abandoned the Expressionist style of his early work in favor of a formally reduced, straightforward style. After Radziwill became the youngest member of the Free Secession Berlin in 1920, he was in contact with fellow contemporary artists in Berlin, among them George Grosz and Rudolf Schlichter, which may have sped up his artistic development towards his new and characteristic style of painting in the years to come, namely Magical Realism. Today, Radziwill's portraits and landscapes from the 1920s and 1930s are an established part of the canon of New Objectivity and have therefore been included in major exhibitions such as "Glanz und Elend in der Weimarer Republik" (Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, 2017/18), “Magic Realism. Art in Weimar Germany 1919-1933” (Tate Modern, London, 2018/19) and, most recently, ‘Die Neue Sachlichkeit. Ein Jahrhundertjubiläum’ (Kunsthalle Mannheim, 2024/25).



In 1925, Radziwill created our fascinating composition, which shows no real, recognizable individuals but rather strongly typified people with all the features of the time due to the strict frontal alignment of the people, the tablecloth that has been pushed massively into the picture but at the same time covered with the most delicate ornamentation, and the mysterious content of the picture. Although the painting with the enigmatic title "Eine Türe öffnet sich" featured in the anniversary exhibition "Neue Sachlichkeit. Bilder auf der Suche nach der Wirklichkeit” (New Objectivity: Pictures in Search of Reality), along with paintings by, among others, Max Beckmann and Conrad Felixmüller, and was also published in the catalog of the same name, its mysterious and enigmatic content remains mainly unexplored to this day. Radziwill had married Johanna Ingeborg Haase, depicted here between the curtain, two years before the painting was created in his new home in Dangast. In a bold combination of a setting that oscillates between a depiction of Venus and a representation of Mary, a self-portrait and a portrait of an older couple, Radziwill created a modern vanitas painting in the style of New Objectivity, formally inspired by Rembrandt's Brunswick Family Portrait, which Radziwill particularly admired during this period. [JS]