August Macke - Sitzender Akt II - image-1

Lot 34 Dα

August Macke - Sitzender Akt II

Auction 1223 - overview Cologne
06.06.2023, 18:00 - Evening Sale - Modern and Contemporary Art
Estimate: 70.000 € - 90.000 €
Result: 94.500 € (incl. premium)

August Macke

Sitzender Akt II
1912

Watercolour and gouache on white transparent paper. 32 x 27 cm. Framed under glass. Faded estate stamp verso lower right and dated and titled "Sitzender Akt" in pencil. - In very good condition with fresh colours.

In 1912 August Macke repeatedly used watercolours and drawings to explore the subject of the female nude. “Sitzender Akt II” captivates us with its luminosity, and the artist has developed it purely out of colour. The figure is realised in reddish-brown contours, the flesh tones transition into a shade of orange in the shadows, and highlights are inserted by way of individual details in light green. This same light green as well as a dark blue provide the defining colours of the surrounding space, which also incorporates the tonality of the nude again in the lower part of the picture. The resulting complementary contrasts give special emphasis to the figure and pull it further into the foreground, whereas the surrounding space retreats.
Macke was impressed by the spatial effects that Robert Delaunay had developed through the use of colour in his works. In 1912 the contact between the two artists intensified, and Macke was inspired to conduct similar experiments with colour. “Without contrasts of light and dark, Delaunay intertwines the contrasting groups of colours (or perhaps it would be better to say that he unravels them, but into a unified whole) in a way that produces an intensely projecting and receding movement in his pictures” (August Macke, cited in: August Macke und die frühe Moderne in Europa, exh. cat. Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Münster/Kunstmuseum Bonn 2001/2002, p. 20).
The very broadly defined natural forms of the surrounding space possess an ornamental quality often found in Macke’s watercolours from this period. The same nude also exists as a pencil drawing (“Studie zum ‘Roten Akt’”, Heiderich Zeichnungen 1100) featuring more interior modelling, but without the elaboration of the surrounding space.

Catalogue Raisonné

Heiderich 158; Vriesen (1957) 176

Provenance

Artist's estate; Kunstsalon Änne Abels, Cologne (label on reverse); Private ownership, Munich, since 1957; Kunsthaus Lempertz, Köln, Auktion 1059, Moderne Kunst, 27 November 2015, Lot 304; Private collection, Lower Saxony

Exhibitions

Hanover 1935 (Kestner-Gesellschaft), August Macke, cat. no. 73; Bielefeld 1957 (Städtisches Kunsthaus), Macke. Aquarell-Ausstellung, cat. no. 176, illus. p. 26; Arnsberg 2019 (Sauerland Museum), August Macke ganz nah, full-page colour illus. p. 83