Jankel Adler
Halbakt
1927
Oil on canvas 82 x 60.2 cm Framed. Signed 'adler' in red lower left and verso signed, dated, titled, and inscribed 'Jankel Adler "Halbakt" 1927 Düsseldof Liststr. 26' in black. - Partially with fine craquelure. Occasional minor losses of colour and retouches particularly in the white and along the canvas edges.
Jankel Adler's formal idiom changed in the mid-1920s. Not least under the influence of Pablo Picasso's monumental and statuesque concept of the figure during the early 1920s, the demarcation of space within his compositions became more generous and the forms more fluid and two-dimensional. Adler combined his formal affinity with Picasso's emphatically voluminous depiction of women with an experimental selection of painting media, in which the materiality of his compositions also adheres to a specific semantic substance: “Everything anecdotal has been renounced, instead, Jankel Adler is concerned with a symbolic depiction of universal human existence, fundamental experiences of reality, human beings' subjugation to their fate and the cycle of life. Adler's prototypical characterisation of the figures invests them with a timeless and dignified aura, but they nonetheless embody a strong individuality, and they are filled with a visionary power in their state of a quiet submission to waiting. Adler's symbolic concept strives in the direction of anti-naturalistic tendencies, which leave their mark on the materiality of the paint mixed with sand and plaster, the way he plays with shadows and silhouettes and the suggestion of ornaments. Perhaps Adler also wishes to imply that the language of fate manifests itself in the outward structure of things” (Exh. cat. Jankel Adler und die Avantgarde. Chagall, Dix, Klee, Picasso, Von der Heydt-Museum Wuppertal 2018, p. 303).
The artist's prominent significance within the European avant-gardes of the 1920s is documented through the numerous purchases of his works by private collections and institutions as well as the premiere of his work “Katzen” at the exhibition “Deutsche Kunst” in Düsseldorf in 1928 - this painting from 1927 was afterwards purchased by Joseph Haubrich and is now to be found in the Museum Ludwig in Cologne.
Like only a few other works from this period, our large-format, half-length nude - with its quiet, understated monumentality - embodies the essence of this important phase in Jankel Adler's oeuvre.
Catalogue Raisonné
Not recorded by Heibel
Certificate
We would like to thank Annemarie Heibel, Isselburg-Anholt, for kind scientific information on this work.
Provenance
Private collection, the Netherlands