232 - Hans Purrmann

Hans Purrmann Bildnis einer Inderin 1956 Oil on canvas. 80.8 x 65.1 cm. Framed. Signed 'H. Purrmann' in black lower left. - Very fine, colour-fresh condition. Lenz/Billeter 56/32 (creation according to Robert Purrmann: Montagnola 1956/57, archive no. 506) The painting is registered in the Hans Purrmann Archive under no. 506. Provenance Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft (since 1958, with inscription on stretcher); loan to the Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Münster, inv. no. 77-62 (label verso) Exhibitions Munich 1958 (Haus der Kunst), Große Kunstausstellung, cat. no. 1366; Munich 1962 (Haus der Kunst), Große Kunstausstellung, cat. no. 97 (label verso) The woman depicted is Fatima Goepfert-Jinnah, a niece of the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. His brother, Ahmed Ali Jinnah, studied in Zurich between 1915 and 1919, where he met Emilie Halm, who later became his wife and the mother of Fatima Goepfert-Jinnah. Fatima Goepfert had modelled for Purrmann on several occasions since 1954 (see, amongst others, Lenz/Billetter 1954/13–16). As we know from Purrmann’s work, he combines his artistic interests with documentary and representational aims. Here he depicts Fatima Goepfert in a simple blue dress against a wall featuring slightly lighter blue vertical stripes on a yellow background, which takes on a greenish hue, particularly in the shaded areas. Whilst the subject’s face is rendered with a fairly natural flesh tone, Purrmann reduces the rest of the picture to the two primary colours, yellow and blue – and to the secondary colour green, which arises from yellow and blue. The colour composition into which all this converges causes the representational function to recede somewhat into the background behind the painterly, quasi-abstract effect.