658 - Karl Peter Röhl (1890, Kiel – 1975)

Karl Peter Röhl (1890, Kiel – 1975) Still Life with Tulips and a Skull Oil on canvas. 1927. Approx. 75.5 x 75.5 cm. Signed and dated lower left; signed, dated, and labeled again on the reverse of the canvas. We thank the Karl Peter Röhl Estate for their assistance in cataloging this work. Karl Peter Röhl was among the founding artists at the State Bauhaus in Weimar. His artistic roots, however, lie in representational painting: After completing an apprenticeship and attending the schools of applied arts in Kiel and Berlin, he studied at the Grand Ducal Saxon Art School in Weimar—under Albin Egger-Lienz, among others—and painted landscapes of his native Holstein. In Kiel, he founded the Expressionist Working Group with Werner Lange and Peter Drömmer, and his works from his early Bauhaus years were also influenced by Expressionism. In 1919, he designed the first Bauhaus logo, the so-called “little star man.” It was not until his encounter with Theo van Doesburg—who held his De Stijl course in Röhl’s Weimar studio in 1922—that he turned to pure abstraction. After years as a master student under Walther Klemm at the Weimar Academy of Fine Arts, he took over as director of the preparatory class at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main in 1926. During these years in Frankfurt, the versatility of Röhl’s work became evident. Alongside strictly geometric compositions, he created paintings in which he returned to representational subjects—to a visual world familiar to him from his Expressionist beginnings. The still life, one of the most traditional genres in painting, became for him a field in which he experimented with color, light, and composition with great painterly freedom. In this work, Röhl groups a vase of red, white, and yellow tulips, oranges, and yellow apples, a seashell, and a skull into a dense arrangement. In doing so, he deliberately draws on the tradition of the vanitas still life: the splendor of the flowers and fruits contrasts with the skull, which, situated in the semi-darkness at the right edge of the painting, serves as a reminder of the transience of all living things. Against the cool, blue-gray background, the warm color accents shine all the more brightly. Thus, the painting combines a classical subject with the free, modern painting style of the late 1920s. Provenance: The artist’s estate; Private collection, Switzerland. Taxation: subject to regular taxation (VAT: Regular Taxation).