1257 - PUTZ, LEO

PUTZ, LEO 1869 Merano–1940 Merano Title: Round Dance 2.I. Date: 1921. Technique: Oil on canvas. Dimensions: 124 x 160.5 cm. Inscription: Signed lower right: Leo Putz. Back: Artist’s label on the stretcher. Frame: Framed. On the shore of a lake, beneath tall trees, five naked young people are dancing in a circle to the melody played by a violinist who is also largely unclothed. It is not clear whether they are all women or whether there is a man among them. Four of them are holding hands; the circle is complete. A young blonde woman, illuminated most brightly by the sunlight, appears to have broken away from the circle. With her back to the other dancers, she approaches the violinist—who is also dancing with long strides and sweeping arm movements—and is the only figure whose blue eyes look directly at the viewer of the painting. The large format of the canvas seems too confined for the dancers; their bodies are cut off by the edges of the picture all around. The painter has rendered the ground and the wider riverside area—the water, the sky, the trees, and even the fluttering, transparent cloths draping the naked bodies—entirely in two dimensions. The figures, however—particularly the violinist, the blonde dancer, and the nude seen from behind on the right-hand edge of the picture—he has “constructed” in a distinctly three-dimensional manner using his painterly techniques. The interior shading and green undertones of the skin tones, combined with clearly defined contours, are reminiscent of both Expressionist and Art Nouveau stylistic devices. The partly ecstatic, nude dance beneath the shelter of the trees appears both unsettling and captivating against the flatly rendered landscape. Leo Putz, who painted this large-format work in 1921, was a painter of light and women. The son of the mayor of Merano had received an excellent education at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts and the Académie Julian in Paris, and upon completing his studies had become a member of the Munich Secession. Paintings influenced by Art Nouveau brought the artist early success, before he began incorporating more Impressionist elements into his work around 1901. He painted “en plein air” in Munich’s parks and by the Bavarian lakes, often alongside fellow artists such as Hans Roth, Edward Cucuel, and Frigyes Strobentz. At the height of a magnificent career marked by public and private acquisitions—even in the United States—gold medals, acclaimed gallery exhibitions, and the title of professor conferred by the King of Bavaria, Leo Putz, aged around 50, painted a series of works on the theme of the round dance. The formats of the works and the poses of the figures in the paintings vary. This large-format version from 1921 is striking for its dynamism, while maintaining a harmonious color scheme in shades of blue, brown, and beige. Leo Putz may not have chosen the title “Der Reigen” (Round Dance) by chance, as it is the name of Arthur Schnitzler’s play, which, when it premiered in 1920, sparked one of the greatest theater scandals of the 20th century. However, the analogy does not extend beyond the similarity of the titles. While the play focuses on the purported moral standards of the social classes and the secret sexual relationships they maintain among themselves, Leo Putz’s painting deals solely with the spirit of the Reform Movement and the self-assured liberation from restrictive constraints and shackles. It is not nymph-like elven figures dancing here on the bank—as fellow painters with Symbolist aspirations were fond of depicting at the time—but real, earthly human beings. Only the small light visible to the left of the violinist’s head might cast a shadow of doubt on this. Provenance: - Private collection, Germany; Lempertz auction, Cologne, June 1, 2018, lot 240. Bibliography: H. Putz: Leo Putz, 1869–1940 - Catalog Raisonné. Vol. 2, no. 650, with ill. Estimated shipping costs for this lot: This lot is not suitable for parcel shipping. Transportation only via a shipping company after consultation following the auction. Additional shipping insurance Shipping insurance up to a total invoice amount of 25,000 euros: max. 41.65 euros over a total invoice amount of 25,000 euros: 1.8 per thousand Shipping to the USA by individual arrangement after the auction. #Leo Putz #Impressionism #Expressionism #Italy #First Half of the 20th Century #Bathing #Dance / Dancer #Paintings.