924 - Clemens Kindling, Belfort, pastel with street scene and figures, Halle School

Clemens Kindling, Belfort, pastel with street scene and figures, Halle School Pastel/paper, signed 'Kindling' lower right. Busy street scene in short, densely set pastel strokes: three large figures stand in the foreground, on the left a person in a red coat with a red cap, beside them a figure in blue with a cap and on the right a man in a black top hat and dark coat. Behind them a crowd of small, merely suggested figures presses between slender street lamps. The buildings are summarised in yellow, ochre and blue-black blocks, in the centre a tall narrow tower with a red shaft rises up. The sky is dissolved into dabs of blue and yellow. Inscribed verso in another hand 'Clemens Kindling 1916-1992', 'Belfort' and with catalogue raisonné number 598. Age-appropriate good condition, paper slightly wavy. Image 45 x 61 cm (HxW). Mount, behind glass, framed in a gold-coloured moulding, overall size 69 x 84 cm (HxW). Clemens Kindling (1916 Großörner in the southern Harz - 1992) grew up in Halle and studied painting and lettering at an early age at the Burg Giebichenstein art academy; he is counted among the Halle School. His most productive phase began after his retirement in 1980: from numerous journeys abroad he brought back sketches which he worked up into pastels and oil paintings in his studio at Dorfmark near Walsrode; three trips to Italy in 1990 and 1991 alone produced more than eighty large-format pastels. His work is recorded with catalogue raisonné numbers. Belfort in the Franche-Comté was a classic destination as a staging post on the road from Basel to Paris.