Franz Wilhelm Seiwert - Stilleben mit gelber Blume und Tonflasche - image-1

Lot 458 Dα

Franz Wilhelm Seiwert - Stilleben mit gelber Blume und Tonflasche

Auction 1121 - overview Cologne
30.11.2018, 17:00 - Modern Art
Estimate: 9.000 € - 12.000 €

Franz Wilhelm Seiwert

Stilleben mit gelber Blume und Tonflasche
1923

Oil tempera on firm light card with embossing "MONOPOL" 31.6 x 22.6 cm Framed under glass. Monogrammed and dated 'FWS 23' in pencil within the composition towards right margin. - The mat opening (30 x 21.8 cm) outlined in pencil; the margins with defects due to former mounting on recto.

Franz Wilhelm Seiwert belonged to a small circle of artists who referred to themselves as the “Kölner Progressive”, or Cologne progressives. Besides him, Heinrich Hoerle and Gerd Arntz were also among its core members. The present still life is dated 1923. That is the same year in which the Kölnischer Kunstverein held a solo exhibition of Seiwert's paintings, sculptures and prints. Through the delicate, botanically unidentifiable flower and the slender leg of a fauteuil, the composition is not quite as rigidly and statically constructed as many compositions by Seiwert have accustomed us to expect. The aim was to banish everything incidental from the picture. Reality was to be comprehensibly represented by means of a simplified formal idiom - at times in the sense of a pictograph. The emphasis on horizontal and vertical axes is characteristic of Seiwert's compositions. The pictorial space is constructed out of interlocking planes. A number of motifs, such as the yellow flower or the earthenware Steinhäger bottle, also appear in other paintings by Seiwert. The sensual colour scheme is particularly appealing. At times the paint has been added using only loose dabs in order to suggest an illusionistic modelling, thus generating a sense of volume.

Catalogue Raisonné

Not recorded by Bohnen

Provenance

Private possession, Rhineland; Private collection, Rhineland