Sotheby's Modern & Post-War British Art Evening Sale London, 17 November 2015: Lucian Freud, Girl and Self Portrait

Lucian Freud, Girl and Self Portrait (1947/48), pen & ink, heightened with coloured crayon, on paper21.5 by 29.5cm; 81/2by 111/2inches (est. £600,000-800,000)

Sotheby’s London has announced the sale of an outstanding rediscovered drawing by Lucian Freud in its Modern &Post-War British Art Evening Sale on 17 November 2015. Girl and Self Portrait is the only self-portrait drawing by Freud known to feature his muse Kitty Garman, who was to become his first wife and whom he had painted devotedly from early 1947. 

Unveiled to the public for the first time in almost 70 years, Girl and Self Portrait was gifted between 1947 and 1948 shortly after it was drawn by the artist to the late Sonia Brownell( 1918-1980), second wife of George Orwell. The drawing now comes to the market for the first time with an estimate of £600,000-800,000.

Lucian Freud gifted the drawing to Sonia, who was almost certainly the inspiration for the heroine of George Orwell’s seminal novel 1984, the ‘girlf rom the fiction department’, with whom the book’s protagonist Winston Smith falls in love, changing the course of the storyline. Sonia and Lucian were close friends during the late 1940s, having met when they both worked at the highly regarded literary journal Horizon.It was Freud to whom Sonia turned when she needed help transporting Orwell to a Swiss sanatorium, in a last ditch attempt to save his life –although he died of tuberculosis a few days before the scheduled departure.

Girl and Self Portrait is testament Sonia’s famed loyalty as a friend. Indeed, despite her financial need later in life, Sonia kept the drawing to the end. During the seven decades that the drawing remained in her homet he work was only lent once for exhibition, shortly after she received the gift, for Freud’s now historic 1948 show at the London Gallery.

This arresting pen and ink drawing, heightened with coloured crayon, was initially intended to illustrate a reproduction of Flyda of the Seas: a Fairy Tale for Grown Ups, a book by Princess Marie Bonaparte, Sigmund Freud’s disciple and patron. It was Marie Bonaparte’s idea to commission Freud’s grandson to do the illustrations for her book in 1947 when translated from the French by John Rodker’s Imago Publishing Company, thoughhis illustrations did not end up being included in the edition. As a gift the drawing couldn't have been more suitable for the ‘girl from the fiction department’-an image created initially to accompany a text, but one that pulsates with the emotional intensity between the artist and model/lover, a theme that Freud was to explore for the next 60 years.

The Greats: masterpieces from the National Galleries of Scotland

Sir Henry Raeburn Reverend Robert Walker skating on Duddingston Loch c1795, oil on canvas;

Sandro Botticelli The Virgin adoring the sleeping Christ child ('The Wemyss Madonna’) c1485 (detail), tempera, oil and gold on canvas. Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh © Trustees of the National Galleries of Scotland

The Greats: masterpieces from the National Galleries of Scotland is one of the most significant collections of European old master paintings ever seen in Australia and is presented as part of the Sydney International Art Series 2015-2016.

Spanning a period of 400 years from the Renaissance to Impressionism, The Greats includes works by the most outstanding names in Western art, including Botticelli, Leonardo, Raphael, Titian, Rubens, Velázquez, Poussin, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Turner, Monet, Degas, Gauguin, and Cézanne.

This richly presented exhibition brings together over 70 of the greatest paintings and drawings from the National Galleries of Scotland, based in the beautiful capital city of Edinburgh.

The Greats marks the first time these artworks have been exhibited in Australia, with the exception of

Rembrandt’s A woman in bed (c1647)

and Seurat’s La Luzerne, Saint-Denis (1884–85).

Botticelli’s Virgin adoring the sleeping Christ child (c1485) has not been exhibited outside of the United Kingdom in 169 years.

Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Michael Brand, said it is a tremendous privilege to host such a fine collection of masterpieces in Sydney and that the Art Gallery of NSW is extremely grateful to the National Galleries of Scotland for their generosity and collegiality.

“The Greats is a statement of unequivocal artistic excellence – each piece in this exhibition is of extraordinary quality. We are excited to provide Australian audiences the rare opportunity to come face to face with such unique and masterful artworks,” Brand said.

“Approaching the entrance to the Art Gallery of NSW, we are reminded of Sydney’s historic aspirations for viewing the creations of European old masters, with names such as Titian, Rembrandt and Botticelli adorning the Gallery’s sandstone facade.

It is with great pleasure that we now welcome incredible works by these artist to our interior walls, into a sublime exhibition space that promises a moving and absorbing experience for all visitors,” Brand added.

Visitors to The Greats will experience the Scottish National Gallery’s famous interior with part of the exhibition space inspired by the Edinburgh gallery’s octagonal rooms with fabric walls of a sumptuous red – the traditional colour on which to hang old master paintings. This installation will serve to accentuate the grandeur of the paintings and foster an intimate experience with each of the artworks.

More images from the exhibition:

 Paul Gauguin, Three Tahitians, 1899. Oil on canvas. Scottish National Gallery

• 
  Diego Velázquez, An Old Woman Cooking Eggs, 1618. Oil on canvas. Scottish National Gallery
   
  • 
    John Singer Sargent, Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, 1892. Oil on canvas. Scottish National Gallery

   

• 
  Camille Pissarro, The Marne at Chennevières, ca.1864–1865. Oil on canvas. Scottish National Gallery
   
  • 
    Edgar Degas, Diego Martelli, 1879. Oil on canvas. Scottish National Gallery

   

Claude Monet Poplars on the Epte, 1891 (detail)

_______________________________________________________________________________

A beautifully designed, fully-illustrated publication featuring an essay by Michael Clarke, produced by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, will accompany the exhibition.

Sotheby’s 18 November Auction of AMERICAN ART: Andrew Wyeth

Sotheby’s will offer three works by Andrew Wyeth from the collection of Hollywood legend Charlton Heston and his wife, Lydia Heston, as part of its American Art auction in New York on 18 November 2015. 

A longtime admirer of the Wyeth family and of Andrew’s work in particular, Charlton Heston began a correspondence with the artist in the 1980s that quickly grew into a friendship, which included visits with Andrew and his family in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania – a location that served as the inspiration for so much of the Wyeths’ oeuvre. Charlton later narrated a documentary on Andrew’s work titled The Helga Pictures Study, and wrote multiple articles on Wyeth for publications such as the National Review.

 

Charlton Heston’s first acquisition of Andrew Wyeth’s work was 

the mesmerizing watercolor Ice Pool (estimate $150/250,000), which he purchased as an anniversary gift for Lydia Heston. 

In 1988, Charlton acquired 

Flood Plain (estimate $2/3 million), a work that exemplifies the skillful combination of medium, composition and subject that has made Wyeth one of the most significant American artists of the 20th century. 

In 1989, Charlton Heston’s son, Fraser Heston, directed him in an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. The two decided that N.C. Wyeth’s illustrations from the 1911 edition of the book would serve as inspiration for the production design. Andrew Wyeth allowed the Hestons to create large-scale blow-ups of his father’s work. As a thank you, the Hestons held a screening of the film at the Brandywine River Museum of Art, which houses much of the Wyeth family’s work. 

Just before Christmas of 1991, a box marked ‘A. Wyeth’ arrived at the Heston’s house. Charlton waited until Christmas morning to open the package, which contained Study for ‘Flood Plain’ (estimate $20/30,000). In a thank you note to Wyeth, Heston wrote “I haven’t been so excited about a Christmas gift since I was ten years old... You’ve given our family not only a piece of your work, which is both your livelihood and your life, but a part of the process... a private part of your working insides.”

Sotheby's November 4- 5 2015: The Collection of A. Alfred Taubman - Impressionist & Modern Art

A dedicated evening auction of property from the Estate of A. Alfred Taubman will be led by a selection of rare examples of Impressionist & Modern Art, foremost among them

Amedeo Modigliani’s outstanding Paulette Jourdain,

Pablo Picasso’s exceptional Femme assise sur une chaise,

and an important pastel by Edgar Degas, Danseuses en blanc.

WILLEM DE KOONING

UNTITLED XXI

Estimate   25,000,000 — 35,000,000

This distinguished collection also features stunning paintings and sculptures from the most influential figures in Contemporary and American Art: from Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, and Jackson Pollock, to Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, and Roy Lichtenstein, the Contemporary works in the Taubman Collection chart the course of artistic innovation in the 20th century.

MARK ROTHKO

UNTITLED (LAVENDER AND GREEN)

Estimate   20,000,000 — 30,000,000

 

Spanning three centuries, the architecture of the human form is among the themes that emerge within the A. Alfred Taubman collection of Modern and Contemporary art.  The works in this sale also show the collector’s focus on exquisite draughtsmanship from some of the greatest Modern masters of line: Picasso, Matisse, Schiele, Miró, Klimt, Degas, and Manet.

Whether a large scale oil by Paul Gauguin or a sinuous Salvador Dalí nude line drawing on sandpaper, the superlative quality of the works offered transcends any one style or time period, with examples from a delicate pastel from 1856 by van Gogh's idol, Jean-François Millet, to a lushly textured Wayne Thiebaud oil just painted in 2014.  Examples of the radical shifts in art history taking place in the 1910's make for particularly fascinating comparisons and contrasts.

Vincent van Gogh

JARDIN PUBLIC À ARLES

Estimate

1,800,000 — 2,500,000

From Max Pechstein's bold Expressionist figures to Pierre Bonnard's brightly colored Nabis canvas of women, from Giocomo Balla's Italian Futurism to Alexander Rodchenko’s Suprematism, from Pablo Picasso's Cubism to an array of works by Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, many works represent the best and brightest of this most explosive decade in the history of modern art, when figuration gave way to abstraction.

Modernism seamlessly transitions to Abstraction with highlights including Alexander Calder’s elegant and delicate standing mobile White Discs on the Pyramid, John Chamberlain’s bright, powerful sculpture Captain Cooke and Mark Di Suvero’s outdoor work Pasta.


Themes of figuration and form reveal themselves in the Contemporary works highlighted by

Tom Wesselmann’s Great American nude, No 61,

Antony Gormley’s Measure III

and the deep and impressive collection of Robert Graham sculptures.

The Women of Klimt, Schiele and Kokoschka

Belvedere 

22 October to 28 February 2016

Around the turn of the twentieth century, the traditional relationship between the sexes was challenged by a series of sweeping social, economic and philosophical changes. The incipient move toward gender parity provoked vehement counter-arguments on the part of popular theorists such as Otto Weininger. On the other hand, to the extent that both men and women wished to escape from the confining moral taboos of the nineteenth century, sexual liberation may be viewed as a shared goal. The more forthright acknowledgment of male and female sexual desire sent thrills and chills through early twentieth-century Austrian art, infusing the work of the nation’s leading artists with a mix of terror and exhilaration. 

Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka each approached what was then commonly known as the “woman question” in slightly different, albeit overlapping, ways. The Women of Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka explores these differences and similarities in depth, in the process providing new insights into early twentieth-century gender relations and the origins of modern sexual identity. Organized both chronologically and thematically, the exhibition focuses on four principal subject groupings: portraiture; mothers and children; couples; the nude. 

It is easy to understand why Klimt’s portraits—sumptuous, elegant and brilliantly colored—were popular with Viennese society ladies. But the artist’s richly ornamented surfaces almost completely obscured the sitters’ personalities. Schiele and Kokoschka turned this decorative formula inside out, thrusting their subjects into a pictorial void. In the process, they forced a confrontation with the existential anxiety that had been concealed by Klimt’s horror vacui. Defying the then-prevalent contention that women lack souls, Schiele and Kokoschka forged a new, modern form of psychological portraiture.

The mother and child, one of the oldest subjects in Western religious art, was likewise transformed by the pressures of fin-de-siècle sexual politics. In the popular imagination, females were categorized either as “Madonnas” (chaste and maternal) or “whores” (sexually voracious predators). Klimt and Schiele subverted this dichotomy by depicting pregnant nudes and naked mothers, thereby explicitly linking motherhood to female sexuality. Kokoschka, on the other hand, seemed really to imagine that maternity “cured” a woman of sexual promiscuity. He obsessed about fathering a child with his lover, Alma Mahler, and in his art repeatedly allegorized her as the Virgin Mary. 

Judging from their work, Klimt, Schiele and Kokoschka shared a belief in romantic love: a union of soul-mates sealed by erotic passion. But whereas Klimt, in his paintings of couples, placed the subject on a lofty allegorical plane, the two Expressionists allowed personal experiences to inflect their work. Indeed, Schiele’s and Kokoschka’s evocations of relationships gone sour are often more emotionally compelling than their renderings of idealized, happy lovers. Because males and females were at the time deemed opposites, the two could not be comfortably joined. 

Traditionally, the goal of the female nude in Western art has been to control and subdue the subject’s innate eroticism through a process of ordering and idealization. At the beginning of the last century, men’s fear of female sexuality was expressed in the concept of the femme fatale, one of Klimt’s recurring subjects. While these brazen, provocative women were controversial in their day, overall there is little in the artist’s work to upset the primacy of the male gaze. Klimt’s nudes are seductively beautiful, and in many of his most explicit erotic drawings they are passive almost to the point of unconsciousness. 

By comparison, Schiele’s and Kokoschka’s nudes are far more abrasive. Angular lines subvert their inviting curves, and erratic cropping creates an aura of unease. Unlike classical nudes, these women often seem aware that they are being watched, and at times they appear none too pleased. Most radical of all is Schiele’s propensity for depicting recumbent women vertically, fostering a sense of confrontational engagement entirely at odds with the aesthetics of the traditional nude. Schiele’s and Kokoschka’s nudes, like Klimt’s, convey an undercurrent of fear. It would not be accurate to call any of these artists feminists. Nevertheless, all three acknowledged female sexual autonomy to a degree that was at the time unprecedented. 

 
Egon Schiele, The Embrace (Lovers II), 1917
Oil on canvas
100 x 170 cm
© Belvedere, Vienna

Egon Schiele, Kneeling Girls, 1911
Gouache, watercolour and pencil on paper
47.2 x 31.5 cm
© Private Collection, Courtesy Richard Nagy Ltd., London

 

Egon Schiele, The Red Host, 1911
Watercolour and pencil on paper
48.2 x 28.2 cm
© Private Collection, Courtesy Galerie St. Etienne, New York

Egon Schiele, Edith Schiele in striped dress, 1915
Oil on canvas
180,2 x 110,1 cm
© Collection of the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag

Egon Schiele, Reclining woman with green stockings, 1917
Guache and black coal on paper
29.4 x 46 cm
Private Collection © Courtesy Galerie St. Etienne, New York

Egon Schiele, Seated Woman in Violet Stockings, 1917
Gouache and black crayon on paper
29.6 x 44.2 cm
© Private Collection, Courtesy Richard Nagy Ltd., London

Egon Schiele, Mother with two children III, 1917
Gouache and black chalk on paper
150 x 159,8 cm
© Belvedere, Vienna

 
Egon Schiele, Portrait Gerti Schiele,1909
Oil, silver, gold-bronze paint, and pencil on canvas
139.5 x 140.5 cm
© 2015. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence

 

Egon Schiele, Cardinal and Nun, 1912
Oil on canvas
70 x 80,5 cm
© Leopold Museum, Vienna

 

Egon Schiele, Portrait of the Artist's Wife, Edith Schiele, 1918
Oil on canvas
139.8 x 109.8 cm
© Belvedere, Vienna

 

Gustav Klimt, Goldfish, 1901/02
Oil on canvas
181 x 67 cm
© Kunstmuseum Solothurn, Dübi-Müller-Stiftung, 1980

 

Gustav Klimt, Fritza Riedler, 1906
Oil on canvas
153 x 133 cm
© Belvedere, Vienna

Gustav Klimt, Eugenia (Mäda) Primavesi, 1913/14
Oil on canvas
140 x 85 cm
© Toyota Municipal Museum of Art

Oskar Kokoschka, Elisabeth Reitler, 1910
Oil on canvas
65 x 54 cm
Photo: Medienzentrum, Antje Zeis-Loi / Von der Heydt-Museum Wuppertal, © Fondation Oskar Kokoschka/ Bildrecht, Vienna, 2015

 

Oskar Kokoschka, Standing Female Nude (Alma Mahler), 1918
Oil on paper and canvas
180 x 85 cm
Private Collection, © Fondation Oskar Kokoschka / Bildrecht, Vienna, 2015, Photo: © Courtesy of Caroline Schmidt Fine Art LLC

 

Oskar Kokoschka, Martha Hirsch, 1909
Oil on canvas
88 x 70 cm
Private Collection, © Fondation Oskar Kokoschka/ Bildrecht, Vienna, 2015

Oskar Kokoschka, The Slave Girl, 1921
Oil on canvas
110.5 x 80 cm
Saint Louis Art Museum, © Fondation Oskar Kokoschka/ Bildrecht, Wien, 2015, Photo: © Saint Louis Art Museum
 

 
Oskar Kokoschka, Lovers with cat, 1917
Oil on canvas
93,5 x 130,5
© Kunsthaus Zürich, © Fondation Oskar Kokoschka/ Bildrecht, Wien, 2015, Photo: © Kunsthaus Zürich

Oskar Kokoschka, Dancing young girl in a blue dress, 1908
Watercolor, tempera and pencil on paper
44.8 x 31.5 cm
Private Collection, © Fondation Oskar Kokoschka/ Bildrecht, Vienna, 2015

WATTEAU’S SOLDIERS: SCENES OF MILITARY LIFE IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE

At the Frick July 12 through October 2, 2016 

  It would be difficult to think of an artist further removed from the muck and misery of the battlefield than Jean - Antoine Watteau (1684 – 1721), who is known as a painter of amorous aristocrats and melancholy actors, a dreamer of exquisite parklands and impossibly refined fêtes . And yet, early in his career , Watteau painted a number of scenes of military life, remarkable for their deeply felt humanity and intimacy. These pictures were produced during one of the darkest chapters of France’s history, the War of the Spanish Succession (1701 – 14). 

But the martial glory on which most military painters of the time trained their gaze — the fearsome arms , snarling horses , and splendid uniforms of generals glittering amid the smoke of cannon fire — held no interest for Watteau, who focused instead on the most prosaic aspects of war : the marches , halts, encampments, and bivouacs that defined the larger part of military life. Inspired by seventeenth - century Dutch and Flemish genre scenes , t he resulting works show the quiet moments between the fighting, when soldiers could rest and daydream , smoke pipes and play cards.   

Watteau produced about a dozen of these military scenes, but only seven survive. Though known primarily only to specialists, they were once counted among the artist’s most admired works and owned by such prominent figures as Catherine the Great and the Prince of Conti. 

Presented exclusively at The Frick Collection in the summer of 2016, Watteau’s Soldiers is the first exhibition devoted solely to these captivating pictures, introducing the ar tist’s engagement with military life to a larger audience while offering a fresh perspective on the subject. Among the paintings, drawings, and prints are four of the seven known paintings — with the Frick’s own 

·         Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) The Portal of Valenciennes (La Porte de Valenciennes), ca. 1711−12 Oil on canvas, 12 3/4 x 16 inches The Frick Collection; purchased with funds from the bequest of Arthemise Redpath, 1991 Photo: Michael Bodycomb

Portal of Valenciennes as the centerpiece — as well as the recently rediscovered  

 

·         Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) The Supply Train (Escorte d'équipages), ca. 1715 Oil on panel, 11 1/8 x 12 3/8 inches Private collectio

Supply Train, which has never before been exhibited publicly in a museum. 

Also featured are about twelve studies of soldiers in red chalk, many directly related to the paintings on view. The works on display offer a rare opportunity to study the drawings and paintings together and probe Watteau’s complex and remarkable working methods. Unlike most of his contemporaries, Watteau did not proceed methodically from compositional sketches, studies, and full - scale models to the final painting. Ins tead, his process followed the whims of his imagination and the demands of the moment. He began by drawing soldiers from life, without a predetermined end in mind. These drawings provided him with a stock of figures, often used multiple times, that he would arrange in an almost spontaneous fashion on the canvas. As a result, figures previously isolated in his sketchbook were brought together and juxtaposed in new social relationships on the canvas, producing the ambiguous, dreamlike effects that make hi s paintings so intriguing. 

The exhibition is rounded out by a selection of works by Watteau’s predecessors and followers: the Frick’s Calvary Camp by PhilipsWouwerman, a typical example of the seventeenth - century Dutch paintings after which Watteau modeled his own; a study of a soldier by Watteau’s follower Jean - Baptiste Pater, from the Fondation Custodia , Paris ; and a painting of a military camp by his other great follower, Nicolas Lancret, from a private collection. These works shed light on the ways in which Watteau transformed the painting of military life in Europe, demonstrating his pivotal influence on the genre

Published by The Frick Collection in association with D Giles, Ltd., London, the book accompanying the exhibition includes an essay by Anne L. Poulet Curatorial Fellow Aaron Wile , and is the first illustrated catalogue of all Watteau works related to military subjects.  

More images from the upcoming exhibition:

Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) The Line of March (Défilé), ca. 1709−10 Oil on canvas, 12 3/4 x 16 inches York Art Gallery, England

Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) Two Recruits, ca. 1712 Red chalk, 6 3/8 x 6 1/8 inches Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; Everett V. Meeks, B.A. 1901, Fund Photo: Yale University Art Gallery

Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) Foot Soldiers, a Drummer, and Two Cavaliers (verso), ca. 1709–10 Red chalk, 6 ¼ x 7 5/8 inches National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh Photo credit: Scottish National Gallery

 Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) Two Standing Soldiers, ca. 1710 Red chalk on aged-toned paper, 5 5/8 x 3 1/8 inches Collection Professor Donald Stone, New York; promised gift to the National Gallery of Art, Washington Photo: Michael Bodycomb

    Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) Three Studies of a Soldier, One from Behind, ca. 1713–15 Red chalk, 6 x 7 ¾ inches Fondation Custodia, Paris Photo credit: Fondation Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt, Paris

  Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) The Halt (Alte), ca. 1710–11 Oil on canvas, 12 5/8 x 16 ¾ inches Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid Photo credit: Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Twilight over Berlin: Masterworks from the Nationalgalerie, 1905-1945

Anchoring the second half of the Israel Museum’s 50^th anniversary year, Twilight over Berlin: Masterworks from the Nationalgalerie, 1905-1945 brings together seminal examples of works by German artists, whose avant-garde creativity was foundational to Israel’s modernist visual vocabulary in a range of creative disciplines. 

On view October 20, 2015–March 26, 2016, the exhibition features works by masters of the German Expressionist movement, among them Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, together with such Weimar period innovators as Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Wassily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee.

Twilight over Berlin continues the Israel Museum’s celebratory collaborations with sister institutions worldwide throughout its 50^th anniversary year and marks its special partnership with the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, also honoring 50 years of diplomatic relations between Israel and Germany.

Featuring artworks created between 1905 and 1945, Twilight over Berlin examines the flourishing of the visual arts from pre-World War I years, and through its struggle against oppression and persecution through Hitler’s ascent to power and World War II.  
Among the exhibition’s highlights are: 

• Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Potsdam Square (1914), one of a series of paintings by the artist that focused on street life in the modern metropolis of Berlin. Depicting two prostitutes with mask-like faces, the work reflects the influence of “primitive art” on this seminal German Expressionist.

 

 
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Potsdam Square, Acquired 1999 with support from the Kulturstiftung der Länder (Cultural Foundation of the Federal States), the Federal Government, the Ernst von Siemens Kunststiftung, the Deutsche Bank Cultural Foundation et al. 

• Otto Dix’s The Skat Players (1920), an anti-militarist collage marking the artist’s transition from Dada to the socially critical New Realism, depicting three hideously disfigured officers in a café playing skat, a popular three-handed German card game.

 

• Among the paintings included in the historic 1937 Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich, Emil Nolde’s Christ and the Sinner (1926), illustrates a scene from the Gospel of Saint Luke in a dramatically compressed pictorial frame in which the Pharisees condemn the prostitute Mary Magdalene as Jesus Christ embraces her.

​

• George Grosz’s Pillars of Society (1926), a denunciation of German society and the Weimar Republic through four allegorical figures: the ear-less legal expert with a swastika on his tie and fencing weapon; a journalist with a chamber pot hat carrying a hypocritical palm frond; a politician whose brain is filled with steaming excrement; and a red-faced military chaplain in robes.

 

• Christian Schad’s Sonja (1928), an iconic portrait of an androgynous office worker, dressed in fashionable clothes and smoking a Camel cigarette, alluding to the notion of the new independent woman.

 Great review

Exhibition Organization

Twilight over Berlin: Masterworks from the Nationalgalerie, 1905-1945 is co-curated by Dr. Adina Kamien-Kazhdan, David Rockefeller Curator, The Stella Fischbach Department of Modern Art at the Israel Museum, and Dr. Dieter Scholz, Curator, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin.