Lot 334 D

The watercolour frames Karl Schmidt-Rottluff's oeuvre both from its beginning and from its end. It takes on a particularly central role in the years of his late work. When we consider that he had already had to give up oil painting in 1963, “Sommermorgensonne” demonstrates the overwhelming power and intensity with which the artist was able to capture the essence of the landscape in watercolours.
The present landscape is distinguished not only by the monumental force of its colours: it also impressively indicates Schmidt-Rottluff's sustained occupation with the essence of colour and light. Of all things, it is precisely the summer-morning sun of the work's title which he has expressed in the form of an empty space, leaving its black contours unarticulated by any colour. The sun's surface is broken up several times, and he has surrounded it with a delicate red halo in the transition to the blue of the sky. It is also complemented by a number of black rays. In Schmidt-Rottluff's consistent vocabulary of forms, this pictorial solution - which he repeatedly utilised in his late work - represents an astoundingly abstract tendency bearing a thoroughly conceptual quality (cf. Eberhard Roters, Rückzug auf sich Selbst - Ausweg ins Offene: Die späten Aquarelle, in: Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Aquarelle, exhib. cat. Brücke-Museum Berlin 1991/1992, p. 37).