Lot 312 D

The works created by Ludwig Meidner between 1912 and 1914 are among the absolute highlights of Expressionism. Influenced by the most recent developments in art, he created his tumultuous and visionary “apocalyptic” landscapes, his urban motifs from Berlin and his street and cafe scenes during these years. At that time the artist was a part of the literary circles of Kurfürstendamm's famous “Café des Westens”. A legendary - and for Meidner important - rendezvous with the poet Guillaume Apollinaire and Robert Delaunay occurred in 1913 at the well-known Berlin patisserie chain Café Josty. He was all too familiar with this milieu from personal experience.
The black-and-white sheet here is of outstanding quality and, in its composition and details, it unites all the characteristic elements of his transformed oeuvre. The expertly realised pictorial architecture develops a centripetal force in its Baroque condensation of space, immediately drawing viewers into the seething complex of the night-time cafe's dense crowd of seated patrons. Meidner uses his representational means to mobilise all the senses: he suggests crowdedness, jostling, a confusion of stories and discussions, noises, odours and kaleidoscopic details which it is scarcely possible to disentangle. Flanked alternately by bull-necked men and female bourgeois staffage, we become lost in the graphic staccato while, specifically at the centre of this depiction of the artificially illuminated ambience, “an impression is stirred as though the space within which these figures move has been lit up by the flash of a stroboscopic lamp” (Caro S. Eliel, Vorbilder von Spätgotik bis Futurismus, in: Ludwig Meidner, Apokalyptische Landschaften, exhib. cat. Berlinische Galerie, Berlin 1990, p. 37). Meidner has noted “Berlin in November” on this sheet, thus ironically suggesting the atmosphere in the midst of these individuals who, as nocturnal revellers among their own kind, find not least human closeness and warming shelter over their cup of coffee.
The present sheet was reproduced and circulated under the title "Café Wolkenbruch, Nachmittag" in the portfolio “Straßen und Cafés”, a series of eight photolithographs based on drawings by Ludwig Meidner in a limited edition in 1918 (see Gerda Breuer, Straßen und Cafés, in: exhib. cat. Ludwig Meidner, Zeichner, Maler, Literat 1884-1966, Darmstadt 1991, vol. II, p. 78, see also comparative illus.).

For this lot, special conditions are applicable (legend "D" according to the conditions of sale).