Lot 389 Dα

In 1927, Rohlfs began to spend most of every year in Ascona, where he produced mainly floral still lifes as well as a few landscapes. At that point in time, he had largely abandoned painting in oil. In the late work here, Rohlfs primarily uses a luminous yellow and ultramarine blue to depict the beauty of a branch sagging heavily under the weight of its fruit. The characteristic personal style, with its concise and spontaneous brushstrokes, recalls early works by the Expressionist artist. He succeeds in creating an abstract version of his model in nature without completely detaching himself from that model. The abstract quality consists not only in a formal dissolving of the objects to the point of their dematerialisation, but also in the luminous, non-realistic tonality, which almost has something impressionistic about it. Deliberately placed, energetic black accents produce a dynamic play of form and colour on the surface of the sheet. The layering of the brushstrokes and their intense tonalities produce an atmosphere vibrating with energy. Rohlfs repeatedly demonstrated his fascination with the abundance of nature and was able to represent it in terms of a balanced unity of composition and in his characteristic individual style.