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Lot Essay
The present work, an Expressionist tour de force, was painted by the twenty-two-year-old Felixmüller in Klotzsche near Dresden in 1919. It depicts the artist's wife, Londa, and their infant son, Luca. Felixmüller, the son of a factory blacksmith, had married the aristocratic Londa, Freiin von Burg, at the beginning of 1918 and their son was born shortly afterwards. At the same time, as a fierce opponent of the war and a committed socialist, Felixmüller had joined the German Communist party, remaining a member until 1926.
Felixmüller was later to write in an autobiographical essay entitled 'Der Prolet (Pönnecke)', published in Die Aktion in December 1920, how the birth of his first son Luca in 1918 at the same time as the German revolution had a profound effect on him and how he came to associate these two momentous events in his life as somehow expressing a deep meaning. 'I felt the spiritual situation of the time', wrote Felixmüller, 'the catastrophical end of the war and at the same time the development of the fruit. Revolution!: it was in me like the unborn life in my wife's body. Indeed child and revolution had come into being at the same time the momentous event of the birth of a human being and the simultaneous beginning of the great revolution lifted me up and carried me away wiping out the last trace of the bourgeois from within me; I was once again a simple man and a proletarian'.
His new family soon became an inspiration and Felixmüller executed a series of tender woodcuts recording Luca's first months. One of his most early celebrated self-portraits also includes the figure of Luca slightly older than in the present work, painted on New Year's Day 1920 (S.195). At the same time as Felixmüller was concentrating portraying his domestic life in his art, he was also performing a pivotal role in the post-war German avant-garde as president of the newly-formed Dresdner Neuen Sezession Gruppe 1919, alongside Otto Dix and Lasar Segall. His proletarian credentials were further reinforced when in 1920 he won the Sächsischen Staatpreis and instead of choosing the usual award of a journey to Rome he undertook a trip to the German industrial heartland of the Ruhrgebiet, where he painted scenes of hardship as a counterbalance to his depictions of his domestic idyll.
Mutter und Kind is an exciting rediscovery. Only known through its description and unillustrated in Heinz Spielmann's catalogue raisonné, it has remained in a discreet private collection since it was purchased by the present owner at a sale in Germany over forty years ago. Before then the picture had belonged to Heinrich Kirchhoff (1874-1934) of Wiesbaden, an important early patron - and supporter - of Felixmüller. Kirchhoff and Felixmüller began a lengthy and wide-ranging correspondence in 1918, and Kirchhoff eventually built a collection of twenty-two paintings by Felixmüller. In this project he was aided by the contract he made with Felixmüller in 1918 setting out his first right of refusal on any paintings in return for a much-needed monthly stipend to the artist.
Felixmüller was later to write in an autobiographical essay entitled 'Der Prolet (Pönnecke)', published in Die Aktion in December 1920, how the birth of his first son Luca in 1918 at the same time as the German revolution had a profound effect on him and how he came to associate these two momentous events in his life as somehow expressing a deep meaning. 'I felt the spiritual situation of the time', wrote Felixmüller, 'the catastrophical end of the war and at the same time the development of the fruit. Revolution!: it was in me like the unborn life in my wife's body. Indeed child and revolution had come into being at the same time the momentous event of the birth of a human being and the simultaneous beginning of the great revolution lifted me up and carried me away wiping out the last trace of the bourgeois from within me; I was once again a simple man and a proletarian'.
His new family soon became an inspiration and Felixmüller executed a series of tender woodcuts recording Luca's first months. One of his most early celebrated self-portraits also includes the figure of Luca slightly older than in the present work, painted on New Year's Day 1920 (S.195). At the same time as Felixmüller was concentrating portraying his domestic life in his art, he was also performing a pivotal role in the post-war German avant-garde as president of the newly-formed Dresdner Neuen Sezession Gruppe 1919, alongside Otto Dix and Lasar Segall. His proletarian credentials were further reinforced when in 1920 he won the Sächsischen Staatpreis and instead of choosing the usual award of a journey to Rome he undertook a trip to the German industrial heartland of the Ruhrgebiet, where he painted scenes of hardship as a counterbalance to his depictions of his domestic idyll.
Mutter und Kind is an exciting rediscovery. Only known through its description and unillustrated in Heinz Spielmann's catalogue raisonné, it has remained in a discreet private collection since it was purchased by the present owner at a sale in Germany over forty years ago. Before then the picture had belonged to Heinrich Kirchhoff (1874-1934) of Wiesbaden, an important early patron - and supporter - of Felixmüller. Kirchhoff and Felixmüller began a lengthy and wide-ranging correspondence in 1918, and Kirchhoff eventually built a collection of twenty-two paintings by Felixmüller. In this project he was aided by the contract he made with Felixmüller in 1918 setting out his first right of refusal on any paintings in return for a much-needed monthly stipend to the artist.