Lot 462 Dα

In Heinrich Nauen's oeuvre, the still life already played an important role in his expressionistic period, especially in the form of the flower still life with vessels. For this work phase the works of Matisse and Cézanne were rightly referred to as a style comparison and compared with Nauens' works as explicit or latent models (see Ina Ewers-Schultz, Die französische Kunst als 'Lehrmeisterin'. Ihre Bedeutung für die Herausbildung der Moderne in Deutschland am Beispiel von Heinrich Nauen, in: exhib. cat. Heinrich Nauen. Der französische Einfluss, August Macke Haus, Bonn 2003, pp. 70/71 ff.). Nauen did not date all of his still lifes. In the first half of the 1920s especially, he picked up on the theme again - in alterations typical for the time.
The present floral still life, presupposes other formerly produced vertical formats in its composition, preferably with gladiolas, dahlias and slender vases, which originated after World War I. As is the case in these works, a decorative drapery in the background provides a formal foil, in front of which the vessels and flowers are arranged. This background shows, especially in the present work, a soft as well as painterly resumption of the motif's stronger developed reddish to salmon-coloured shades of colour which are effectively combined with shades of green. The velvety, dark purple of the vase and the cool blue in the foreground - an interplay of colours, toned down in the fabric and in the diffused background - achieves an additionally fine effect. The result is a harmonious composition in which the shapes develop an even more emphatic life of their own.