Lot 22 Dα

Around 1924 the two Cologne-based painters Heinrich Hoerle and Franz W. Seiwert distanced themselves from the Dada movement to pursue the path of a socially oriented art. As the “Gruppe progressiver Künstler”, Hoerle and Seiwert were “adherents of the Marxist ideology in its simple and most unadulterated sense, that is, in the sense of the elimination of inequality and violence, the unification of the people of all classes and nations and the abolition of property” (Evelyn Weiss, Von Dadamax zu A – Z – Die Kölner Progressiven der zwanziger Jahre, in: exh. cat. Kunstverein Frechen 1970, n. pag.). Based on a socialist motivation, Hoerle desired an art for the people of all classes and saw himself as a worker labouring in “service of the exploited”, as he once wrote.
After his art originally began in the sense of the New Objectivity, Hoerle arrived at a style which combined constructive elements with realistic ones. This combination can also be identified in the wax-crayon drawing “Bäume” offered here, where the strongly abstracted trees, which resemble chimneys, have been linked with a red barn. This drawing was created in 1931, at a turning point in Hoerle’s oeuvre: besides achieving a series of notable successes, he also made a seminal decision with regard to his painting technique. That was the year he resolved to give up oil painting to focus exclusively on working with wax crayons. “He primarily used the wax crayons cold. They leave behind a little colour when rubbed on a surface. The work is laborious and does not produce any rapid results, particularly when multiple layers were to be laid on top of each other, so that the others would shine through. […] However, by means of his intense efforts, Hoerle produced unheard-of effects through the medium’s otherwise dormant possibilities” (Hans Schmitt-Rost, Heinrich Hoerle, Recklinghausen 1965, p. 20). The “unheard-of effects” mentioned by Hoerle’s biographer can also be grasped in the work “Bäume”. With the greatest precision, finest lineation and a pronounced sensibility for colours, he created motifs that appear partly two-dimensional and partly three-dimensional and are combined into a harmonious whole.