Lot 85 D

Christian Schad is considered one of the most important representatives of the New Objectivity. His oeuvre is distinguished by his continuous engagement with artistic tradition and innovation as well as his desire to experiment.
Our work, which was long part of an Italian private collection, was created in 1920 in Naples, where Schad lived until 1925 and began his artistic transition from Expressionism and Dada to the New Objectivity. From Geneva, Schad was first drawn to Rome and then further south, to an “area poorer in culture […] where not everything was served to you in finished form, where something could still emerge out of life's manifold ambivalence and dubiousness. I went to Naples. Delighted by the unique nature of the city, where only a gossamer-thin membrane seemed to separate the bourgeois world and underworld, I advised [Walter] Serner, who already had the intention of also coming to Italy, that he skip Rome and go straight to Naples” (Christian Schad, Relative Realitäten - Erinnerungen um Walter Serner, in: Walter Serner, Die Tigerin, Munich 1971, p. 264).
Schad's earliest Neapolitan paintings, which also include the present picture, attest to his predilection for cafés, variety shows and the theatre - the stages of urban life. In the transitional realm into the night, Schad created works which possess a dense atmosphere and particularly effectively demonstrate his special talent for dealing artistically with light. Not only does our painting bear the theme of light in its title, above all, it underscores Christian Schad's incomparable feel for sensitively tempered portraits. At the stairs up into the light, the previously mentioned, gossamer-thin membrane between bourgeois world and underworld draws close enough to touch.