GEORG SCHOLZ 1890-1945
Vanitas still-life – Three skulls, circa 1930

oil on canvas, 40,5 x 61 cm.
Verso on the stretcher with the stamp of the artist's estate

PROVENANCE
Estate of the artist
Gallery Hasenclever, Munich
Gallery Michael Haas, Berlin
Collection Rüdiger Hurrle, Durbach
Bassenge, Berlin, 12 June 2021, lot 8493

PRICE
Please contact me

EXHIBITION
Berlin, Gallery Michael Haas, Stillleben. gestern und heute, 2015, p. 50
Durbach, Museum für Aktuelle Kunst Sammlung Hurrle, Das Lied der Dinge. Stillleben im Wandel der Kunst, 2018

LITERATURE
Felicia H. Sternfeld, Georg Scholz 1890-1945, Frankfurt am Main 2004, Nr. 91, pp. 383, 487

Georg Scholz is well-known for his socially critical paintings of the 1920s. Having studied under Hans Thoma and Lovis Corinth, he became a leading figure of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), a movement whose artists practised a cynical form of realism. In 1925, he was appointed a professor at the Baden State Academy of Art in Karlsruhe. With the rise to power of the Nazis in 1933, Scholz was dismissed from his teaching position. Declared a Degenerate Artist, his works were among those seized in 1937 and he was forbidden to paint in 1939.

The present work is at once a timeless Vanitas and a visionary painting, given the tragic events that would evolve soon after its creation.