7011 - Corinth, Lovis

Corinth, Lovis Stage designs for Eugene O'Neill's Emperor Jones 5 gouaches over pencil on wove paper, mounted together on cardboard. 1923. One 5.8 x 6.8, and four each approx. 6 x 8.5 cm (the mat 26.5 x 23.3 cm). Signed "Lovis Corinth" and dated in reddish-brown brush on the backing board and inscribed "Bühnenskizzen zu O'Neill, Kaiser Jones" in black pen by another hand at the bottom and dated again at the top and with the location "Nov. 1923 / Berlin". The stage sketches are evidence of Corinth's early involvement with the production of the German premiere of Eugene O'Neill's play Emperor Jones at the Lustspielhaus Berlin with Oscar Homolka in the leading role. It is possible that Berthold Viertel, the director of the play, had initially commissioned Lovis Corinth to design the set for the play, but later decided on Frederick Kiesler as the set designer because he found Corinth's designs too conventional. Kiesler ultimately created a completely new and groundbreaking constructivist concept for the history of stage design. The present sketches, on the other hand, present Corinth's early expressive-painterly concept of stage design. Corinth, who had already created designs for the theater on several occasions, depicts various wooded environments and the throne room as the central locations of the play. The provenance of the sheet suggests that the art collector and doctor Dr. Martin Flaum, who had strong connections in the cultural scene and was employed at the Charité and the Jewish Hospital in Berlin from 1923-1933, among other places, may have acquired the drawings either directly from Corinth or from his estate and collected them in an album. Due to his Jewish origins, Flaum was no longer able to practice officially from 1933, but continued to treat many of his patients privately. He was therefore arrested in 1936 and finally had to leave Berlin in 1937 and emigrate to the Netherlands with his family. While one of his daughters was murdered in Auschwitz, the rest of the family was able to flee to Palestine in 1941 and Flaum later returned to Germany for several years as a British army doctor during the war, while his family remained in Haifa. His daughter Ursula later moved back to the Netherlands to study, married there and remained in Amsterdam for the rest of her life. Provenance: Collection Dr. Martin Flaum, Berlin/Haifa Cornelis Jacob Sint and Ursula Chaja Sint, née Flaum, Amsterdam (by inheritance) Private property Netherlands - Please ask for condition reports for individual lots, as the condition is only stated in the catalog in exceptional cases. - Please ask for condition reports for individual lots, as the condition is usually not mentioned in the catalogue.