959 - Heinz Zander, Judith with sword and flowing hair, half-length figure, dated 1981

Heinz Zander, Judith with sword and flowing hair, half-length figure, dated 1981 (1939 Wolfen to 2024 Leipzig), pencil and coloured pencil/paper with watermark, signed "Zander" in pencil lower left and dated 1981, half-length figure of a young woman with long flowing hair, looking at the viewer, in her left hand a broken sword over which a sprig with leaves is laid, above her head a pink dripping form, Judith, on the reverse label of the Kunsthandlung Thomas Wolf, Auerbach, age-appropriate condition, foxed, paper yellowed, image 53x37 cm (HxW), mount, behind glass, framed, overall 70x51 cm (HxW) Heinz Zander, born in Wolfen in 1939 and died in Leipzig in 2024, studied from 1959 to 1964 at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig under Bernhard Heisig and was then a master student of Fritz Cremer at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. His painting and drawing follow an old-master technique and a pictorial language of his own, inspired by Bosch, Grünewald, Altdorfer and the Italian Mannerists; besides pictures of the Peasants' War and illustrations to Poe, Brecht and Kafka, mythological figures and female figures shape his work, which is represented in the Nationalgalerie Berlin and the Galerie Neue Meister Dresden. Judith, the heroine of the Book of Judith, beheaded the Assyrian general Holofernes, who was besieging Bethulia, with his own sword; the long sword is her fixed attribute in art, often together with a tent entrance or curtain. The pencil drawing of Judith with coloured pencil belongs to the Leipzig painter's drawings of the 1980s.