Erich Heckel

Erich Heckel Excentrics 1948 Tempera on canvas. 80.5 x 71.3 cm. Framed. Signed and dated in black lower right 'Heckel 48'. Signed and dated on the reverse of the canvas 'Erich Heckel 1948' and signed, inscribed and dated on the top of the stretcher 'Heckel 'Excentrics' 1948' and "E H 33"'. - Minimal rubbing at the edges of the picture, otherwise in perfect condition. Hüneke 1948-2 Provenance Estate of the artist, Hemmenhofen; Roman Norbert Ketterer, Campione (1969-1971); Private collection Hamburg Exhibitions Freiburg 1950 (Kunstverein), Erich Heckel, cat. No. 41; Kaiserslautern 1952 (Landesgewerbeanstalt), Erich Heckel, cat. No. 11; Hannover/Berlin 1953 (Kestner Gesellschaft/Hochschule für Bildende Künste), Erich Heckel, Cat. No. 55, with ill. (with rear sticker); Münster 1953 (Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte), Erich Heckel, Cat. No. 89; Duisburg 1957 (Städtisches Museum), Erich Heckel, cat. No. 62; Nuremberg/Pforzheim 1964 (Fränkische Galerie/Kunst- und Kunstgewerbeverein), Erich Heckel, cat. No. 29; Düsseldorf 1965 (Galerie Wilhelm Großhennig), Erich Heckel, p. 26, with ill.; Campione 1970 (Galerie Roman Norbert Ketterer), Erich Heckel. Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings, Prints, cat. No. 8, with color ill. Literature Paul Vogt, Erich Heckel, Recklinghausen 1965, no. 1948-2, with ill.; Erich Heckel. Der stille Expressionist, exh. Cat. Brücke-Museum Berlin u.a., Munich 2009, with color ill. at cat. No. 100 Familiar with the world of vaudeville through his wife Siddi Riha, a dancer, Heckel continued to explore circus themes into the 1950s. It is characteristic that he rarely showed the artists during their performance, but mostly afterwards, when they accept the applause of the audience or leave the stage. In the period from 1924 to 1928 Heckel first dealt with the depiction of clowns in a series of etchings and woodcuts. In 1936 he took up the theme again, portraying two clowns in a watercolor against a racy circus backdrop. He returned to this very constellation again in 1948, adding to it a female figure in the background on the right. Heckel called this painting "Excentrics" and in the watercolor version "Artists" (1947, Brücke Museum). The three figures are in front of a cropped Ferris wheel, gazing silently out of the painting. As a text on Heckel's circus paintings says, he understood the melancholy clown as a symbol of being an artist per se. Going beyond this meaning, the artists may also have been of interest to Heckel because they "lead[ed] a placeless and vagabond life that excluded them from 'normal' society. Their appearance in a different role allowed them-and the artist-to hold up a mirror of themselves to the audience." (Katharina Henkel, in: Ausst. Cat. Erich Heckel. Der stille Expressionist, Brücke-Museum Berlin 2011/12, Munich 2009, p. 30).