165 - Ernst Hassebrauk

Ernst Hassebrauk 1905 Dresden – 1974 Dresden – “Inge in a Blue Dress” – (1958) Oil on canvas. 80 x 63 cm. 90 x 73 cm (dimensions with frame). Signed “Rahmen” on the back of the stretcher. Slight loss of paint in the lower left corner and along the left edge. – Provenance: Private collection, Hesse / Ketterer Kunst, Munich, auction on June 12, 2007, lot 19. – Catalog raisonné: Hassebrauk No. 124. - Literature: Ernst Hassebrauk. 1905–1974, Dresden State Art Collections, Gallery of New Masters, Dresden 1979 (with inventory of the estate) - Dieter Hoffmann, Ernst Hassebrauk: Life and Work, Stuttgart/Zurich 1981. Ernst Hassebrauk is considered one of the leading figures in 20th-century Dresden painting. After studying in Dresden and Leipzig—under Carl Rade, Willi Geiger, and Alois Kolb, among others—he taught as a professor in Leipzig from 1947 to 1949 before returning to Dresden to work as a freelance artist. Through his engagement with the Old Masters—particularly Rembrandt and Frans Hals—as well as the expressive painting of Oskar Kokoschka, he developed a distinctive visual language. Even under the cultural-political constraints of the GDR, he maintained his artistic independence and remarkable freedom in the use of color. The 1958 painting “Inge in a Blue Dress” illustrates Hassebrauk’s mastery as a portraitist and colorist. With spirited, impasto brushstrokes, he contrasts the luminous red of her hair with the cool blue-violet of the dress, accentuated by a red flower at the neckline. While the background dissolves into dynamic swaths of color, the subject’s calm, pensive expression lends the portrait a special intensity. The subject may be the Dresden artist Inge Thiess-Böttner (1924–2001), whom Hassebrauk had known personally since 1946 and who may have been depicted as early as 1949 in an etching titled “Inge with a Summer Hat.” A definitive identification has not yet been established. The work exemplifies Hassebrauk’s distinctive art, characterized by painterly freedom.