Lot 138 Dα

With the pair of floral still lifes presented here and as the following lot, we are able to offer two works by the artistic companions Rudolf Levy and Walter Bondy. Around 1902 these men became friends in Munich, where they were attending private painting schools and were involved with the same circle of artists in Schwabing. They went to Paris together in 1903. Overwhelmed by their impressions of the city, they explored Paris's various quarters together. They chose the modest and then still unknown Café du Dôme in Montparnasse as a place to meet: it would subsequently establish itself as an illustrious centre for the foreigners among Paris's arts scene. In 1908 their personal contact with the much-admired Henri Matisse led to the founding of his private painting school, the “Académie Matisse”, which existed until 1912 and whose members included Hans Purrmann, Oskar Moll and Jules Pascin in addition to Levy and Bondy. In the summer months of the following years, the artists of the Café du Dôme also set out together for stays spent painting in rural France and, around 1910, the gallerist Alfred Flechtheim established connections with members of this circle. When Flechtheim presented the work of the Parisian circle of artists in an initial survey exhibition in Düsseldorf in 1914, Levy's and Bondy's paths initially took them in separate directions until they met again in Berlin in 1922. Further exhibitions of the circle of artists at Flechtheim's gallery and at Berlin's Freie Secession presented their works together. In 1921 Karl Scheffler described the kinship of their art, which also reveals itself in our two works: “The painters of the Café du Dôme are children of the great French traditions. They are progressive, but not revolutionary; they do not want to start over again from the beginning, but to develop what exists. They are all painters of the beautiful surface and defenders of the glorious culture of painting. This group is represented by Pascin and Großmann, Purrmann and Levi [sic!], Weißgerber, Ahlers-Hestermann, Bondy, Fritz Friedrich and others” (Karl Scheffler, cited in: Susanne Thesing, Rudolf Levy. Leben und Werk, Nuremberg 1990, p. 23).