Watercolor. Signed in lower right, lower left inscribed with the work number "6728". Titled and dated on the reverse. On off-white wove paper. 69.5 x 49.8 cm. , the full sheet.
[AR] Further works from the Dr. Maier-Mohr Collection will be offered in our Evening Sale and Contemporary Art Day Sale on Friday, June 7, 2024 - see collection catalog "A Private Collection - Dr. Theo Maier-Mohr".
- This composition is characterized by unusually strong contrasts and places emphasis entirely on the vertical. - Still life plays a central role in Schmidt-Rottluff's late work. - He increasingly turned to his immediate surroundings and the "quiet life of things", as he himself once put it. - In " Zwischen den Vorhängen" (Between the Curtains), he opens the view into a bright distance, creating an atmospheric space at the transition between inner and outer world. - For the first time offered on the international auction market (source: artprice.com).
The work is documented in the archive of the Karl and Emy Schmidt-Rottluff Foundation, Berlin.

die kleine galerie, Kampen/Sylt. Dr. Theo Maier-Mohr Collection, Hesse (acquired from the above in 1970). Ever since family-owned

In the present watercolor ""Zwischen den Vorhängen", Karl Schmidt-Rottluff created a composition based on unusually strong contrasts and with a strong emphasis on the vertical. Through the flower with its jagged leaves accentuated in green and blue, he guides the beholder's eye from a foreground framed by black curtains into the brightly lit center and opens the view into the distance. As is so characteristic of the artist's late work, the watercolor offers a glimpse into his private environment, into the rooms and objects of his everyday life. They are a personal dialog with the objects, accounts of the formal beauty of things and an examination of their nature. "I believe that most paintings are about processes," Schmidt-Rottluff once wrote, "I always wanted to show the essence and the quiet life of things." (Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, 1960). In just a few words, he sums up the special expressiveness of his still lifes. In his late watercolors in particular, however, there is often a further, spiritual level that goes beyond the pure apprehension of the object. The view from the interior into a more or less defined outside world, known throughout art history, is referenced in " Zwischen den Vorhängen" and also emphasized by the unusually strong contrast of light and dark. The increasing fragmentation of the line and the abstraction of the object in the late creative phase results in new, atmospheric spaces where the boundary between the representational and the spiritual can no longer be clearly identified. [AR]

In good condition. The paper slightly wavy, presumably due to the technique. The sheet edges minimally irregular.