Werner Heuser
Figurenszene mit weiblichem Akt
1913/1915
Oil on canvas 93 x 86.5 cm In plain artist's frame. Signed, dated, and inscribed 'W.Heuser/Oktober Frascati 1913/Juli Düsseldorf 1915" in blue brush verso on canvas. - Fragment of the typographically printed label of the Flechtheim Gallery verso upper left on canvas overlap and stretcher, therein handwritten entry "1834". - With even web of craqueleur, isolated minute losses of colour.
Stylistically and also in its arrangement and exotic southern atmosphere, this statuesque figural composition recalls early works by Karl Hofer, with whom Werner Heuser was closely tied through a shared studio in Rome, among other places; Paris also marked a station on their artistic journey, and in 1912 both painters still identified themselves as “Werner Heuser, Paris” and “Karl Hofer, Paris” in the catalogue of the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne. Werner Heuser, whose early work is almost unknown today, was well known after the First World War and among the founders of “Junges Rheinland”; his works were exhibited by Alfred Flechtheim and, in 1926, he received a teaching position at the academy of art in Düsseldorf. The Nazis considered him “degenerate”, and in 1938 he was prohibited from working as a painter.
Provenance
Formerly Galerie Alfred Flechtheim, Düsseldorf; Art trade Rhineland; Private possession, North Germany