Max Peiffer Watenphul - Blumenstillleben - image-1

Lot 273 Dα

Max Peiffer Watenphul - Blumenstillleben

Auction 1134 - overview Cologne
31.05.2019, 17:00 - Modern Art
Estimate: 18.000 € - 22.000 €

Max Peiffer Watenphul

Blumenstillleben
Circa 1946/1948

Oil on artist's board 64.3 x 54.4 cm Framed. Monogrammed 'M. PW' in black chalk upper right. Inscribed "A. /25 [?]" by hand verso. - In fine condition with vibrant colours.

One hundred years ago - in October of 1919 - Max Peiffer Watenphul, Doctor of Laws, began his studies at the Bauhaus in Weimar, which had just been opened by Walter Gropius. Paul Klee had recommended that he study there, and he attended the elementary courses of Johannes Itten, was active in the workshops for weaving and pottery and became intensely interested in the medium of photography. Bizarre portraits and unusual cityscapes from Venice and the Italian countryside around Rome, Cefalù and Ischia are a few of the subjects of Peiffer Watenphul; still lifes and particularly luxuriant bunches of flowers, like this one in a Chinese vase, were the artist's other favourite motifs. Isolated flowers in the style of the New Objectivity in the 1920s increasingly became concentrated into magnificent bouquets and positively explode past the edges of the painting. We can sense the artist's aesthetic sensibility for flowers, his ability to ornately combine them by species and colour, to gather them in rich contrasts and thus present a delightful, early summer marvel of colours featuring larkspur, mimosas, chrysanthemums, carnations and sunflowers, among others. Peiffer Watenphul also devoted his attention to their containers. In addition to glass vases, these usually consisted of regal porcelain vessels, such as this one featuring a Chinese motif, which accompanied the artist in his still lifes throughout his lifetime and tastefully identify him again and again as a cultured aesthete.

Catalogue Raisonné

Not recorded by Watenphul Pasqualucci/Pasqualucci

Provenance

Private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia, family possession