Franz Wilhelm Seiwert - Mutter und Kind I - image-1
Franz Wilhelm Seiwert - Mutter und Kind I - image-2
Franz Wilhelm Seiwert - Mutter und Kind I - image-3
Franz Wilhelm Seiwert - Mutter und Kind I - image-1Franz Wilhelm Seiwert - Mutter und Kind I - image-2Franz Wilhelm Seiwert - Mutter und Kind I - image-3

Lot 499 Dα

Franz Wilhelm Seiwert - Mutter und Kind I

Auction 1163 - overview Cologne
09.12.2020, 11:00 - Day Sale - Modern and Contemporary Art
Estimate: 6.000 € - 8.000 €
Result: 6.875 € (incl. premium)

Franz Wilhelm Seiwert

Mutter und Kind I
1921

Clay sculpture. Light clay, fired with reddish tints Height 37 cm Monogrammed 'FWS' in pencil on the underside and signed 'FW SEIWERT' at the edge. - Overall in fine original condition; with fire-specific irregularities in the surface. - Older, appropriately restored minor defects at the lower edge.

In dating the present sculpture, Bohnen follows the corresponding mention of it by the artist to the French writer Tristan Rémy, whom Seiwert had met personally in 1922. Seiwert would become friends with Rémy and they would work together more closely politically and in their writing.This figural composition is enchanting not just because of its soft, organic contours but particularly because of its archaic air. The abstract style grinds down the forms within its contours, the material, the roughened surface and the earth tones of the clay seem to highlight something primally human, like objects from prehistoric times, although the mask-like emptiness of the faces represents a defamiliarising technique in the early 20th century - a formal risk deliberately taken by the artist in this period. Among the artist's many lost and destroyed sculptural works, this large mother-and-child group from an old Wuppertal collection stands out in every regard as an exceptional and valuable example of his work.

Catalogue Raisonné

Bohnen 373 (this exemplar with illus.)

Provenance

Formerly Dr. Clemens Grobel, Wuppertal, estate