Christian Rohlfs

Christian Rohlfs Ascona - Monte Gridone 1936 Water tempera on watercolour laid paper with watermark 'P M FABRIANO'. 59 x 79 cm. Framed under glass. Unsigned. Stamped "NACHLASS CHRISTIAN ROHLFS" verso and inscribed "Gemalt Sommer 1936 in Ascona-Schweiz Frau Christian Rohlfs" by Helene Rohlfs. - In fine condition with very fresh colours, three sides with short marginal tears, probably due to work process, old backing verso. Vogt 1936/31 (?) Provenance Galerie Alex Vömel, Düsseldorf (gallery stamp on frame card); private property, Bavaria Christian Rohlfs’s late work revolves around a landscape motif: the view of the Lago Maggiore. Every year the painter rented the Casa Margot in Ascona, whose large terrace opened out on to a panorama of the lake. At every time of day and night, he used a seismographic sensibility to capture the distinctive, elementary phenomena of this landscape consisting of the lake and mountains. He created tempera paintings that possess a lucidly resonating brilliance that derives from his special technique and that emerge out of the constant washing and brushing of repeatedly applied layers of paint. Sheets of special handmade paper provide a materiality similar to the textiles of batik weavings. “In spite of this transparency and dispersion, the representational motifs do not seem pale and insubstantial; they retain their presence and sensory force. These are even intensified through their unworldliness and dematerialisation, and this is what is astounding, this heightened clarity” (Erich Franz, Präsenz des Unabgrenzbaren, in: Christian Rohlfs. Das Licht in den Dingen, exh. cat. Emden/Münster 1999/2000, p. 13). The late landscape impressions created at Lago Maggiore are among the exceptional works by the German expressionist Rohlfs, which even made their way into the collection of the Louvre in Paris through a purchase in 1933.