Lot 92 D

Familiar with the world of variety theatre through his wife Siddi Riha, Erich Heckel continued to explore circus-related motifs into the 1950s. It is characteristic that he rarely shows the performers during their acts; instead, he presents them afterwards, receiving their audience’s applause or exiting the stage.
Heckel first occupied himself with images of clowns during the period from 1924 to 1928, in a series of etchings and woodcuts. In 1936 he returned to this theme in a watercolour portraying two clowns in front of a dynamic circus backdrop. Taking up precisely the same constellation in 1948, he added a female figure to the right in the background. This painting, which Heckel called “Excentrics” – and, in the watercolour version “Artisten” (1947, Brücke-Museum). The three figures stand in front of a partially concealed Ferris wheel, silently gazing out from the painting. As has been mentioned in a text about Heckel’s circus pictures, he understood the melancholy clown as a symbol of the artist’s existence in general. Beyond this significance, the performers probably also interested Heckel because they led a vagabond life that left them without ties to any place and excluded them from “normal” society. Their appearance in a different role permits them – and the artist – to hold a mirror up to their audience (Katharina Henkel, in: exh. cat. Erich Heckel. Der stille Expressionist, Brücke-Museum Berlin 2011/12, Munich 2009, p. 30).