Franz Radziwill Lot n° 38

Franz Radziwill Landscape with yellow trees 1922 Oil on canvas on wood 79.8 x 85 cm Framed. Monogrammed 'FR' in red lower left. - Overall in fine condition. Firmenich/Schulze 123 Provenance Durrieu Collection, Hamburg; 480th Math. Lempertz'sche Kunstverteigerung, Art of the XXth Century, Cologne, 3/4 December 1964, lot 537; Georg Düser Sr. Collection, Oldenburg; Galleria del Levante, Milan/Munich; Galleria d'Arte Stivani, Bologna (with adhesive paper label on reverse); Private Collection, Italy; Private Collection, France Exhibitions Oldenburg 1925 (Augusteum/Association for Young Art), Franz Radziwill, cat. No. 22; Hamburg 1927 (Kunstverein), European Contemporary Art, cat. No. 125; Berlin 1968 (Messehallen am Funkturm), Juryfreie Kunstaustellung 1968 mit historischer Sonderabteilung, Cat. No. 45 Literature Gerd Presler, The painter Franz Radziwill in his early years - 1917-1920/21, unpublished manuscript 1974, p. 5; Gerhard Wietek, Franz Radziwill and Wilhelm Niemeyer - Documents of a friendship, Oldenburg 1990 p. 108; Gerd Presler, Franz Radziwill, Die Druckgraphik, Karlsruhe 1993 with ill. p. 23 This representative painting from 1922 is an impressive manifesto of Franz Radziwill's engagement with the Expressionist painting of his contemporaries. The renunciation of plastic modelling of the landscape in favour of a strong two-dimensionality, the plunging perspective, and above all the palette with its emphasis on primary colours unmistakably demonstrate the lasting impression that the works of the Brücke artists, above all Schmidt-Rottluff and Erich Heckel, must have had on the artist. Karl Schmidt-Rottluff had met Franz Radziwill at Wilhelm Niemeyer's in April 1921. It was he who recommended that he discover Dangast - the place that was also so important for his own artistic work. After Radziwill initially commuted between Bremen, Hamburg, Berlin and Dangast, he settled in the village on the Jadebusen as early as 1922. In the same year he exhibited his works together with those of Heckel and Schmidt-Rottluff under the title "Dangaster Künstler im Lappan" in Oldenburg. Three years later, the artist also presented our picture to the Oldenburg public. The fact that Franz Radziwill did not simply imitate the Expressionism of the Brücke, but received it individually and developed it further, is demonstrated by the "Landscape with Yellow Trees". For example, he expands the palette, which is characterized by complementary contrasts, in the use of grey-black sections, which, in the interplay with the chromatic chords of the houses, fields and flame-like trees, evoke an atmospheric picture that heralds the mysticism and magic of later phases of the work. This scene of the luminous landscape seems unreal, almost uncanny, in the maelstrom of a nocturnally darkened pictorial space in which there no longer seems to be any secure hold for the viewer.