Lot 72 D

This remarkably large-format still life is centred around “Blauroter Kopf” – also known as “Panischer Schrecken” or “Erstaunender Kopf” – a work created by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff in 1917 under the influence of African artefacts (see Gerhard Wietek, Schmidt-Rottluff – Plastik und Kunsthandwerk, cat. no. 31, with col.ill. on the cover). This head carved in wood and then painted is now to be found at Berlin’s Brücke-Museum, which received it as a gift from the artist. While he presumably made use of the head multiple times in his own paintings, this one is strikingly similar to the Karl und Emy Schmidt-Rottluff-Stiftung’s coloured-chalk drawing, which is only half its size: the head is placed prominently in the middle with a yellow tobacco case to the right and the same striped vase with white flowers to the left (see exhib.cat. Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Munich/Vienna 1997, cat. no. 158, with full-page col.ill.).