Untitled

Details

Not included in Wedewer. We are thankful to Dr. Alfred M. Fischer for the information he has kindly provided for cataloguing this lot. Exhibitions: Adolf Fleischmann. An American Abstract Artist? Themen, Kontext und Rezeption des US-amerikanischen Spätwerks 1952 bis 1967, Daimler Art Collection, Berlin 2016, with col. illus. p. 101. Provenance: private collection

Description

• Pioneer of geometric abstract painting in Germany
• Inspired by the vertical and horizontally arranged compositions of Mondrian
• An example of Fleischmann’s unmistakable style Adolf Fleischmann, one of the pioneers of geometric abstraction in Germany, found his unmistakable style in the 1950s.
Using a sparse formal vocabulary of angles, narrow stripes and shapes derived from rectangles, he created complex compositions in which various structures are superimposed. Inspired by Mondrian’s horizontally and vertically ordered designs, he set geometric shapes next to narrow, parallel stripes. The forms are carefully placed, in keeping with Fleischmann’s desire to divide the pictorial space in a calculated manner. Their balanced colouring means that they seem to float, and ultimately begin to vibrate, against the background. At the beginning of 1950, Adolf Fleischmann “suddenly saw the light that would make him the painter we know. At that time he lived in an old Parisian country house on the edge of the Bois de Vincennes (…). His painting had developed rapidly in the previous months. The elements of his works were simplified, the curved line was abandoned, his palette showed greater restraint. Then came the discovery of the horizontal-vertical rhythm that Mondrian valued so much, and thus the beginning of a completely new phase in his work. He was almost sixty years old at the time, but it was not too late to create a remarkable body work that, due to the number and size of the paintings, was so important that he can now be considered one of the greatest German painters of the second half of this century . (…) When he had to move from Paris to New York in 1952, his new style had already become well established. Fleischmann continued on his path, and nothing could distract him from his chosen direction.” (Michel Seuphor, in: Rolf Wedewer, Adolf Fleischmann, Stuttgart 1977, p. 7).