Walter Dexel Lot n° 727

Walter Dexel - Railway terrain. Watercolor over pencil on strong wove paper (papier vélin), originally mounted by the artist on cardboard. (19)21. Approx. 26 x 34 cm (cardboard approx. 33.5 x 40 cm). Signed and dated "21/5" lower right, inscribed "5" lower left. Titled on the backing cardboard lower left. - Characteristic, technically-industrially influenced image motif from the early 1920s - Color-intensive, prismatically dissected cityscape with railroad - Composition clearly reminiscent of Robert Delaunay's Parisian cityscapes Walter Dexel's art is at the beginning still clearly influenced by his teacher Hermann Gröber, a student of Leibl. It was not until he spent several months in Paris in 1914 that he broke away from this influence, and the numerous early landscape depictions he had previously produced now changed to city motifs. Slowly Dexel moved closer to the French Cubists Léger, Braque and Delaunay, even if at first there was still a much greater resemblance to Vlaminck's pictorial language. In 1914 Dexel painted the first two station motifs in Paris: "Paris Station Motif" and "Gare St. Lazare" (WVZ 50, 51), and in the following city views modern railroad bridges appear strikingly often as the central pictorial motif. Dexel thus follows a pictorial tradition referring to William Turner and Claude Monet, who already in the 19th century used train stations, iron bridges, railroads, and steam engines as symbols of technical progress and industrialization in their works. The train station in particular also stands as a synonym for modern travel, as a gateway to the wide world. From now on, Dexel's works were increasingly characterized by technical and industrial subjects: locomotives, railroad signals, viaducts, blast furnaces, water and winding towers, machine shops, steam engines, sailing and steam ships. Stylistically, color-intensive expressionist and later geometric-cubist influences are increasingly evident. The watercolor "Eisenbahngelände" ("Railroad Grounds") from 1921 shows a prismatically dissected city silhouette with a railroad track in cheerful, expressive color. But even though the motif is already dissected into numerous geometric color fields, the railroad and city are still clearly recognizable. It was not until a year later, in 1922, that Dexel would find his way to a completely abstract pictorial language, free of any representational references. Verso handwritten inscribed "W. Dexel. 21 / Eisenbahngelände / Cat.No. 87". Wöbkemeier 160. exhibition: Walter Dexel, Städtisches Museum, Braunschweig 1962, cat.-no. 87; Walter Dexel, Städtisches Kunstmuseum, Bonn 1973, cat.-no. 45; Walter Dexel, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover 1974, cat.-no. 67, p. 108; Walter Dexel and Lyonel Feininger, Galerie Rolf Ohse, Bremen 1976, cat.-.No. 6 (with illustration); Walter Dexel, Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster 1979, cat.-no. 159, p. 174. Provenance: Galerie Rolf Ohse, Bremen; Galerie Valentien, Stuttgart; private collection, Lower Saxony; private collection, Southern Germany. Taxation: Differentially taxed VAT: Margin Scheme