Lovis Corinth

Lovis Corinth Zinnias 1924 Oil on canvas. 70 x 65.5 cm. Framed. Signed and dated in black lower right 'Lovis Corinth 1924'. - In good, freshly colored condition. With small retouches. Berend-Corinth 944 with ill. p. 860 Provenance Galerie Schlichtenmaier, Grafenau; Private collection Southern Germany; Nagel Auctions, Auction 684, Modern Art, June 27, 2012, Lot 1000; Private property Germany. Exhibitions Wolfsburg 1956 (Volkswagenwerk, in the secondary school), German Painting. Selected Masters since Caspar David Friedrich No. 33, with full-page fig. 44; Wolfsburg 1958 (Volkswagenwerk, in the Stadthalle), Lovis Corinth, Memorial Exhibition. To celebrate the centenary of his birth, cat. No. 221; Munich 1958 (Städtische Galerie), Lovis Corinth. To celebrate the hundredth anniversary of his birth. Paintings, cat. No. 161; Grafenau 1996 (Galerie Schlichtenmaier), From a Thousand Green Mirrors. Plants and Flowers in 20th Century Art, with color illus. on title and full-page color illus. p. 43; Munich/Berlin/Saint Louis/London 1996/97 (Haus der Kunst/Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin/The Saint Louis Art Museum/Tate Gallery), Lovis Corinth, cat. No. 169, with color ill. p. 292 Lovis Corinth achieved a completely independent painterly expression in the last years of his life, his most important artistic phase - an expressionism marked by temperament and passion, in which he revelled in the colors of nature as if liberated. In his Berlin studio and in his refuge at Walchensee, where the Corinth family had built a summer house in 1919, the painter worked with unbridled creative energy until shortly before his death. During these years he created the famous Walchensee pictures and numerous flower still lifes, which in their motivic and painterly opulence reflect Corinth's impulsive personality. The transience of the subject always resonates in the background, despite all its splendor. "In these still lifes, too, the emotional-sensual impression is determined above all by the irregular [color] spots that create dynamism, while dirty tones sensuously-restrictively break the abundance and purity of color and hint at the process of decay; life and death combine." (Friedrich Gross, in Lovis Corinth 1858-1925, exh. Cat. Museum Folkwang Essen/Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung Munich 1985/1986, p. 51). He created this view of a lush bouquet of multicolored zinnias in the year before his death. Among the other still lifes in which he captured the colors of the seasons, this one stands out for the particular richness of the flowers. Here his painterly mastery culminates in an intimate engagement with the lavish but ephemeral abundance of nature. Corinth chose a slight overhead view of his subject, bringing the viewer as close as possible to the blossoms. The viewer immediately becomes a witness to their beauty and colorful splendor, which seems to burst the limited pictorial space. Impulsively placed dabs of color and short, broad strokes add to the characteristic flower shapes of the zinnias, but remain painterly completely free.