Karl Hagemeister - Wellen - image-1

Lot 135 Dα

Karl Hagemeister - Wellen

Auction 1156 - overview Cologne
20.06.2020, 11:00 - Modern and Contemporary Art - Day Sale
Estimate: 25.000 € - 30.000 €
Result: 42.500 € (incl. premium)

Karl Hagemeister

Wellen
Circa 1910

Oil on canvas 76 x 116 cm Framed. Signed 'K.Hagemeister' in black lower right. - Professionally cleaned, two minor canvas defects closed.

The element of water is omnipresent in the oeuvre of Karl Hagemeister - whether as calm ponds in the woods or swampy landscapes from rural Brandenburg, light-filled views of Schwielow Lake and the Havel river or the roaring waves of the Baltic Sea, which he captured on the beach at Lohme on Rügen.
The power of the turbulent sea and the thundering roll of the waves during stormy weather exerted an unceasing fascination on the painter. Thus, in 1931, he wrote to his pupil Siegwart Sprotte: “You need to continue working where I stopped. First of all study on Rügen, then go to Bornholm, then to Norway! And now I wish you a great storm urge, so that you understand Beethoven's Ninth, in which he has depicted the battle of the elements.” (cited in: Hendrikje Warmt, Karl Hagemeister. In Reflexion der Stille, Berlin 2016, p. 171).
The year 1931 is also when the gallerist Hermann Abels, who formerly possessed the seascape offered here, visited Karl Hagemeister in Werder. At the house of the painter, who lived under the most modest conditions, Abels admired the beauty of Hagemeister's pictures of waves: “I point to a splendid painting above the sofa, depicting a wave, and ask about its price. 'Yes', he says, 'that is art. Everything painted from nature, in three hours. Have never had a studio in my life.” (Hermann Abels, Ein Besuch beim alten Hagemeister, in: Die Kunst für Alle, vol. 47, 1931/32, p. 18).

Catalogue Raisonné

Warmt G 454

Provenance

Galerie Abels, Cologne (1933); in family possession, Rhineland-Palatinate/North Rhine-Westphalia, since