Lot 323 Nα

According to the research of Sibylle Groß, it is “very probable that the present street scene by Lesser Ury depicts the Leipziger Straße in Berlin-Friedrichstadt. This street linked the octagon of the Leipziger Platz in the west with the Gertraudenstraße in the east by way of the Dönhoffplatz and Spittelmarkt. In the final years of the 19th century and in the early 20th century, this street transformed into one of the most important and most frequented shopping streets in Berlin and featured numerous major department stores. With its central shops and restaurants in the northern Friedrichstadt, it was Berlin's high street. Horse-drawn tram service along the Leipziger Straße began in 1880 and was later electrified. The artist depicted the Leipziger Straße with its brightly lit display windows quite often.” (Sibylle Groß in her expert report, Berlin 2017).
The Leipziger Straße had its finger on the pulse of the times in a vibrant metropolis and featured extremely modern lighting, making it an attractive subject for Lesser Ury. In our painting, he depicts the lights of the city hitting the wet asphalt of the street. Using warm yellow to glaring white, with sometimes greenish nuances, the artist masterfully presents the reflected light of headlights, street lamps and display windows, while paradoxically fixing their initially immaterial qualities on the canvas in markedly impasto passages of painting. By minimally but nonetheless unmistakably shifting the central perspective away from the middle, he has developed a fragile compositional balance, which seems to point not least to the ephemeral aspect of night and the fleeting nature of its illumination.