411 - Kurt Scheele

Kurt Scheele 1905 Frankfurt am Main – 1944 Smolensk – Magician – (1935) Ink on paper mounted on cardboard. 22 x 34.5 cm. 44 x 57 cm (dimensions including frame). Signed and dated lower right: Scheele (19)35. Indistinctly titled and numbered lower left: A. 48. Estate stamp on the back of the frame. Numbered there: Z 277. Mat. Fully visible, framed under glass. The painter and graphic artist studied from 1922 with Albert Windisch at the Technical School for the Book Trade and with the commercial artist Rudolf Koch in Offenbach. Beginning in 1924, he was taught drawing at the Frankfurt Art School by the Expressionist Franz Karl Delavilla. His membership in the artists’ group “Der Keil” began when he moved to Berlin in 1927. In the following years, he undertook study trips throughout Europe. In 1927–28, he took painting classes with Martin Bloch and Anton Kerschbaumer. It was also during this time that he discovered woodcut printing, a technique that would come to dominate his body of work. In the years that followed, he moved away from Expressionism in his painting and turned to abstract art. As a result, his works were classified as “degenerate” during the Nazi era, and he was banned from exhibiting his work beginning in 1939.