Christian Rohlfs
Sonnenblume
1934
Water tempera, brushed and scratched, on firm watercolour laid paper 78 x 57 cm Framed under glass. Monogrammed and indistinctly dated 'CR 34' in yellow ochre lower right. Numbered and titled "Nr. 10 Sonnenblume" by the estate in pencil verso. - With studio traces, the colours very fresh.
Christian Rohlfs's late work can be seen as the climax of his vibrant and multifaceted oeuvre, as the final synthesis of his Realist, Impressionist and Expressionist artistic principles.
As early as 1911 Christian Rohlfs had already said that he did not wish to paint pictures of nature, but instead to provide himself with material from it (cf. Erich Franz, Präsenz des Unabgrenzbaren: Zu den späten Temperabildern von Christian Rohlfs, in: Achim Sommer/Erich Franz, Christian Rohlfs: Das Licht in den Dingen, Cologne 1999, p. 14). The present work is thus to be understood less as a depiction of a sunflower than as an exploration of the immaterial qualities of colour. At the same time, the bloom's nature, its growth, blossoming and withering refer equally to the metaphysical process of painting as a productive act of visualisation and to the ephemeral presence of the appearance of colour and form.
Catalogue Raisonné
Not recorded by Vogt
Provenance
Acquired by the former owner via Paul Vogt, Essen, in the 1970s; family possession since, Rhineland