Lot 24 D

The painting "Junge Münchnerin mit Hut" by Christian Schad was created during a short stay in Munich. After stations in Rome and Naples, a lack of commissions forced him to return to Munich, where he was able to produce portraits of the urban upper middle classes thanks to his father's contacts. Artistically, after experimenting with Expressionism, Cubism and Dada, he was at the beginning of his new objectivity creative phase, which reached its peak in the mid-1920s.

The painting is an masterful portrait of a young woman from Munich with the features of Marcella Arcangelis, Schad's Italian companion and soon to be his first wife. He portrayed her with dark brown, curly hair and a coat draped loosely around her shoulders. Her most striking item of clothing is her hat with feather decoration on the wide brim. The brush passes lightly and with thin paint over the canvas and captures the type of the young woman: the pretty face and the slightly melancholic look from the clear blue eyes. Like hardly any other portrait of these years, it stands on the verge of Schad's artistic breakthrough - while the cape, hat and background are captured in a watercolour-like lightness, the face already reveals his fine, realistic painting style. In terms of colour, the painting captivates with a dash of beige and light green tones, which are accentuated by the red of the lips.