Lot 341 D

Already in the late 1920s, Erich Heckel's paintings demonstrated a more delicate palette, the expressive formal language of the artist group "Die Brücke" is increasingly synthesized in ornamental aspects - a tendency that continued into the 1960s. From around 1930, Heckel had also resumed his early preference for tempera painting. The artist experimented extensively with the composition of the binding agents for the paint, which he refined over the years. In this way Heckel was able to achieve the vivid, matt-powdery surface appearance that also characterises this still life.

An essential feature of this composition is the ornamental background, in front of which Heckel stages the palm grape standing in a vase on a small table, renouncing any spatial depth,. The background shows a cloth painted by Heckel himself that today belongs to the artist's estate (cf. Andreas Hüneke, Erich Heckel, Werkverzeichnis der Gemälde, Wandbilder und Skulpturen, edited by H. Geissler and R. Ebner for the Erich-Heckel-Stiftung, Hemmenhofen, Munich 2017, p. 380). It is particularly striking how subtly the painter integrates his signature into the ornamental structures - in this way, the painting and the depicted cloth appear as signed both. Similar to the wooden sculptures Heckel repeatedly quotes in his paintings, the inclusion of his immediate living environment also reveals Heckel's talent for constructing complex reference systems within his multi-faceted work.