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21

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE AMERICAN COLLECTION MAX BECKMANN (1884-1950) Rote Tulpen und feuerlilien ...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:500,000.00 - 700,000.00 USD
PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE AMERICAN COLLECTION MAX BECKMANN (1884-1950) Rote Tulpen und feuerlilien ...
PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE
AMERICAN COLLECTION
MAX BECKMANN
(1884-1950)
Rote Tulpen und feuerlilien
(red tulips and tiger lily)
signed and dated
"Beckmann 35" (lower right)
oil on canvas
30 7/8 x 29 3/4 in. (78.5 x 75.5 cm)
painted in Berlin, 1935
Estimate: $500,000-700,000 <p>Provenance
Sigmund Morgenroth, Santa Barbara (acquired in 1938)
Florence Theil-Lewis, Hollywood (before 1955)
Anon. sale: Christie's, London, October 9, 1996, lot 114
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner <p>Exhibited
Oakland, Ca, Mills College Art Gallery and San Francisco, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, Max Beckmann, July 12-August 13, 1950, no. 14
Santa Barbara, Ca, Santa Barbara Museum of Art; San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Art; and pasadena, Pasadena Art Institute, Max Beckmann, May 24-June 26, 1955, no. 12 <p>Literature
The Artist's Handlist, Berlin, 1935 (as Rote Tulpen u. Feuerlilien)
Erhard and Barbara Göpel, Max Beckmann, Katalog der Gemälde, Bern, 1976, vol. I, p. 283, no. 427; vol. II, pl. 146 (illustrated)
In Rote Tulpen und Feuerlilien, one of a small group of still-lifes executed by Beckmann in 1935, the artist brilliantly fuses the traditional elements of still-life painting with a poignant symbolic component. In the composition, Beckmann clearly delineates the relationship between interior and exterior space by contrasting the objects to a blackened window. In Beckmann's depiction, the world outside is a dark, forbidding place - literally an inky, uninterrupted blackness. Such were the conditions in 1935 Germany under the Third Reich. Beckmann, dismissed by the National Socialists from his Frankfurt teaching post two years earlier, lived in relative retreat and isolation in Berlin. Perhaps this is why the chair rails strongly evoke the bars of a jail cell.
Yet Beckmann's scene is still hopeful. The interior colors are alive with fire and, although the tulips are wilting, the tiger lily bursts forth - a small but proud sun against the darkness. It is also no accident that the lily drinks from the cup of Juniper. ("Junip....Lyon" inscribed on the empty glass refers to the popular liquor produced in the region of Lyon.) These fragrant berries, not only the source of gin's distinctive taste, have long been associated with protection, warding off illness, negative forces, and evil. They become Beckmann's talisman, nourishing his tiger lily and making a striking impression in the black night.
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