Jankel Adler
Ruhende mit aufgestütztem Arm
1931
Watercolour and pen drawing, probably on paper, mounted on firm card fragment painted on verso and lacquered 9 x 11.7 cm Framed under glass. Signed "Jankel Adler" in pencil verso on old backing card and numbered "6." above in blue crayon. - Partially with unobtrusive horizontal craqueleur.
The present small-scale painting was presumably created by Jankel Adler as contribution to the exhibition "9 x 12", initiated by Heinrich Hoerle, of the "Rheingruppe", an association of artists that seceded from the "Junges Rheinland" at that time. The charming small composition takes up the motif of the reclining figure from a mural created in 1926. Various artists designed murals for the lancet arched planes in today's "Tonhalle" in Düsseldorf - at that time "Rheinhalle" or "Planetarium" - designed by the architect Wilhelm Kreis. In the pendentive painted by Jankel Adler, he inserted a formally related sleeping figure in the lower left taking up a very similar position to the reclining figure (see comparative illus., the picture detail was published in the October issue "von a bis z", 1929).
Provenance
Private possession, Cologne; Private collection North Rhine-Westphalia
Literature
Cf. Anna Klapheck, Jankel Adler, Recklinghausen 1966, p. 16 with illus. p. 57 (mural); Dirk Backes, Heinrich Hoerle, Leben und Werk 1895 - 1936, p.113, reprint of "a bis z" Cologne October 1929 with illus. "jankel adler aus einem Wandbild"; Jürgen Harten (ed.), Jankel Adler, Cologne 1985, exhib. cat. Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, cat. no. 20 with illus. (mural)
Exhibitions
Düsseldorf 1931 (Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Ausstellung der Rheingruppe), 9 x 12 (no cat.); Düsseldorf 1996 (Galerie Remmert und Barth), Das junge Rheinland. Künstler - Werke - Dokumente, cat. no. 10 with colour illus.