Amédée Ozenfant - Nature morte devant une fenêtre - image-1

Lot 256 D

Amédée Ozenfant - Nature morte devant une fenêtre

Auction 1143 - overview Cologne
29.11.2019, 18:00 - Modern Art I
Estimate: 40.000 € - 60.000 €

Amédée Ozenfant

Nature morte devant une fenêtre
1922

Pastel and graphite on laid paper 28 x 19.3 cm (depiction) resp. 36.2 x 22.7/24.8 cm Framed under glass. Signed and dated 'ozenfant 1922' in opaque white lower left. - In fine condition, the motif distinctly outlined in pencil. - The right margin of the laid paper sheet irregularly torn in slight curves.

Today, the present crayon drawing dating from 1922 from the first phase of Amédée Ozenfant's Purist output is one of the rare examples of his works from this period. Back then, he produced an experimental sequence of different new compositional variants in what was one of his preferred media. “Nature morte devant une fenêtre” is as such invaluable early testimony to Ozenfant's personal exploration of his own, changed formal artistic principles. Together with Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier) he had in 1918 outlined in the treatise “Après le cubism” the development of a theory that he now put to the test in artistic images: By referring to an object the still life, a classic theme in western painting, now served in exemplary manner to demonstrate the rational concept of a geometricized, planimetric order within the pictorial surface.
Ozenfant succeeds in grouping a few vessels in a flat, abstract pictorial space that seems somehow to reflect a traditional pattern of a picture detail (table, wall and window). They are only defined as objects due to their contour lines. The strictly planar composition and the reduced colours neutralize any illusion of corporeality and interconnect the individual forms. In the process, thanks to the medium of coloured chalk and by means of gently tempered transparent transitions the abstract pictorial elements meld inseparably into a new and balanced planar pictorial figure. The graduated and carefully distributed colour tones, the carefully positioned asymmetry and the ornamental appeal of the slender flat flutes such as glasses have intensify the allure and vibrancy of this otherwise hermetically self-contained composition.

Catalogue Raisonné

Guénégan 1922/OP-016

Certificate

With a photo-certificate (no. 253/2016) by Pierre Guénégan, Paris, dated 19 October 2016

Provenance

Formerly Zitreen Collection, USA (acquired directly from the artist); Bernès Collection, Cannes; European private collection