528 - Heinrich Campendonk (1889, Krefeld – Amsterdam, 1957)

Heinrich Campendonk (1889, Krefeld – Amsterdam, 1957) Man with a Red Top Hat and Woman Watercolor and gouache on Japanese paper, mounted on cardboard. (Circa 1912). Approx. 54.5 x 44 cm (mount approx. 56.5 x 46 cm). Firmenich 156. • This large-format watercolor was created in Sindelsdorf, Upper Bavaria, where Campendonk had been living since October 1911 at the invitation of Franz Marc • This work belongs to the artist’s early Expressionist period • Campendonk explores the deep longing for a paradisiacal unity between humans, animals, and nature The portrait-format gouache “Man with a Red Top Hat and Woman” was created during Campendonk’s early years in Sindelsdorf, Upper Bavaria. He had been living there since late 1911, thanks to the introduction by August Macke and his cousin Helmuth Macke, in the neighborhood of Franz Marc, whom he greatly admired. Through the two Macke cousins, Campendonk—then 21 years old—had recently come into contact in Munich with the “Blue Rider” circle centered around Kandinsky, Marc, and Gabriele Münter. For the young artist, this shift from isolation in Krefeld to the milieu of the emerging avant-garde of Expressionism and Abstraction marked the decisive turning point in his search for his own means of expression. In April 1912, Campendonk’s girlfriend Adda Deichmann—whom he had met while they were both students at the School of Applied Arts in Krefeld—also moved to Sindelsdorf. Campendonk rented two large rooms specifically for this purpose in a “large, clean farmhouse—one with three or even four windows, high and airy, with a view across the entire moor all the way to the mountains.” During these first happy years, he created some of his most beautiful and intimate watercolors, depicting him and Adda as a couple. In “Man with a Red Top Hat and Woman,” they stand prominently at the front edge of the picture as a young, city-dressed couple in a rural setting of colorful, lyrically abstracted forms, between their figures, drawn from a slight low-angle perspective, and the small house in the background, a garden table placed at an angle serves as a link in the middle ground. The bright red of the top hat and tie is echoed in the headdress and dress of the dark-haired Adda; the gestures of their arms reveal the couple in a tender embrace. The influence of the mature watercolors of the admired Franz Marc is clearly evident here in the slightly refracted, prismatic forms, the stylized tree on the left, and above all in the transparent layers of paint applied one over the other, which make this piece truly special. Two further watercolors belong to these early testimonies of their love and their beginnings in Sindelsdorf: “Lovers (Adda and Heinrich),” Firmenich 158A, and “Couple on the Balcony,” WVZ 150A; here, too, Adda is recognizable by her dark, slanted eyes; on the balcony of her house, she is also wearing the light red dress and is integrated with her companion into a setting strongly reminiscent of Marc’s animal visions. In June 1913, Heinrich and Adda Campendonk were married; Maria Marc wrote to Elisabeth Macke about this: “Sindelsdorf is now under a special sign. The three pairs of friends are all in the registry at the same time—to file for marriage. Campendonk, Adda Deichmann, Niestlé, and Legros in Sindelsdorf, and Franz and I in Munich. (…). It’s truly wonderful that we’re now joining in with the others again.” During World War I, the artist felt increasingly isolated in Sindelsdorf; Marc was on the Western Front, and his friend, the animal painter Jean-Bloé Niestlé, had moved to Seeshaupt on Lake Starnberg. In 1915, Campendonk’s son Herbert was born in Sindelsdorf; in early 1916, the family also moved to Seeshaupt. It was here—and soon during many stays in neighboring Penzberg—that Campendonk’s engagement with oil painting intensified. In numerous, imaginatively rich paintings, he now typically depicts couples as nudes—and here, too, one often thinks one can still recognize Adda as the model—in vibrantly colored, fairy-tale-like settings in which the Bavarian landscape, memories of Franz Marc and his depictions of animals, and his own world of figures intertwine to form a mysterious unity. “Man with a Red Top Hat and Woman” was created during a creative period in which Campendonk produced only a few oil paintings and regarded his large, pictorial watercolors and gouaches as equally valuable, as the author of the catalog raisonné, Andrea Firmenich, emphasizes on several occasions. This work—much like the two other early depictions of Paard, which remain in private hands to this day—radiates youth, inspiration, self-discovery, tender connection, and a sense of new beginnings. Dr. Annegret Hoberg Exhibition: Heinrich Campendonk, Städtische Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf, et al., 1972/73, ill. p. 260; Heinrich Campendonk, Haus Greiffenhorst, Krefeld 1975, cat. no. 21; The Rhenish Expressionists: August Macke and His Painter Friends, Städtisches Kunstmuseum,