7166 - Thiemann, Hans

Thiemann, Hans "Still Life Behind Blue" Oil on canvas. 1934–37. 134 x 83 cm. Signed "hans thiemann" in black with a brush in the lower left corner and dated; dated and titled again on the back of the stretcher. Essen 15. As the last graduate before the Bauhaus was closed by the Nazis, Thiemann completed his studies at the Bauhaus in 1933 under Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky. The influences of his teachers had a lasting impact on him and are also decisive for this early still-life composition. In it, Kandinsky’s principles of elementary form-giving are combined with Klee’s metaphor-rich visual language and are woven together by Thiemann into a visual world all his own—one that is downright poetic. At the same time, a recurring element in his paintings appears here for the first time: the upright ladder, whose symbolic, ambiguous character Thiemann deliberately leaves undefined. After the years of deprivation during the war, Thiemann was quickly able to reconnect with the Berlin art avant-garde and was among the very first artists to be featured in a solo exhibition at the newly founded Galerie Rosen. The painting was most recently displayed for many years in a prominent location at Villa Metz in Potsdam. Provenance: Collection of Wolfgang Joop and Edwin Lemberg, Potsdam Lit.: Hans Thiemann and the Berlin Fantasts, exhibition catalog, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin 2000, ill. p. 28 - Please request condition reports for the lots, as the condition is only indicated in the catalog in exceptional cases. - Please ask for condition reports for individual lots, as the condition is usually not mentioned in the catalog.