Franz Marc - Zwei liegende weibliche Akte - image-1
Franz Marc - Zwei liegende weibliche Akte - image-2
Franz Marc - Zwei liegende weibliche Akte - image-1Franz Marc - Zwei liegende weibliche Akte - image-2

Lot 210 Dα

Franz Marc - Zwei liegende weibliche Akte

Auction 1051 - overview Cologne
29.05.2015, 18:00 - Modern Art
Estimate: 35.000 € - 40.000 €
Result: 45.880 € (incl. premium)

Franz Marc

Zwei liegende weibliche Akte
1911

Black chalk drawing on chamois coloured sketchbook paper with perforated upper resp. side margin and with rounded corners 17 x 21.7 cm Framed under glass. Numbered "22" by Maria Marc in pencil to the lower left corner. Labelled to the backing card, therein stamped "Nachlass Franz Marc Galerie Stangl München" and with typewritten information on the artist, title, year and with the estate no. "109".

Along with the characterisation of numerous animal species in diverse variations and facets, the depiction of the female nude - primarily embedded within a surrounding landscape - was a theme that occupied Franz Marc in the years 1910 to 1912. Whereas the earlier “Zwei weibliche Akte in arkadischer Landschaft” - the sketch of 1910/11 and the painting of 1911 - still display both a situation among young tree trunks that is clearly more bound to nature and a physiognomically more detailed realisation, the minor descriptive details in our work created one year later have disappeared in favour of a more abstract and harmonious overall impression (cf. Hoberg/Jansen, vol. III, p. 195, Sketchbook XXIII, p. 18, and Hoberg/Jansen, vol. I, no. 143, p. 162). Both compositions share the contrasting poses of the stooped and crouching figure turning to the viewer and the casually reclining figure turning away. The pencil drawing “Zwei liegende Akte” found its realisation in the eponymous 1912 tempera work, in which the landscape no longer appears naturalistic but is instead dissolved into colourful, round forms and the human anatomy also appears largely reduced to basic geometric elements (see comparative illus.). The formal-aesthetic realisation is radicalised, and the ideal of an Arcadian harmony is grasped in nuce.

Catalogue Raisonné

Hoberg/Jansen p. 172, Skizzenbuch XXI, p. 22

Provenance

Maria Marc, Ried; Galerie Otto Stangl, Munich (stamped to the back of the frame), Marc Estate no. 109; Private collection, Bavaria; Private collection

Exhibitions

Munich 1980 (Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus), Franz Marc 1880-1916, cat. no. 96, illus.; Berlin/Essen/Tübingen 1989/1990 (Brücke-Museum/Museum Folkwang/Kunsthalle Tübingen), Franz Marc. Zeichnungen und Aquarelle, cat. no. 64, with full page illus.; Munich 2005/2006 (Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau), Franz Marc. Die Retrospektive, cat. no. 158 with colour illus.