Still life with relief

Details

Lenz/Billeter 1949/14.

Provenance:

Collection Richard H. Zinser (1884-1984), Stuttgart/New York, since then in family ownership, USA.

Description

– Market-fresh work from the collection of the New York art dealer Richard H. Zinser

– Typical still life from the Montagnola period with the elements relief, striped wallpaper and mirror

– The antique relief fragment bears witness to Purrmann’s passion for collecting

Purrmann continued his intensive occupation with flower and fruit still lifes during his time in Florence in Montagnola, where he fled in 1944. He remained in Switzerland, interrupted several times by trips to Italy and Greece, until his death in 1966.

The elements of this still life – the stone Roman relief fragment, the striped wallpaper and the mirror – are present in numerous still lifes by Purrmann, including “Still Life with Relief” (Lenz/Billeter 1949/18), “Camellias in Faience Vase” (Lenz/Billeter 1949/21) and “Still Life with Relief in Front of Mirror” (Lenz/Billeter 1957/38).

In this work, the artist has created a particularly sophisticated composition. The lines of the three main components, flowering branches, vase and relief, interweave in the centre of the picture to form a dense ornamentation, which is framed vertically and horizontally by the surfaces of the wallpaper, table top and mirror. Reflection is an important theme that provides a special vitalisation: the reflection of the wall mirror on the right shows the flowering branches in front of the black and green-yellow wall surface. It is almost impossible for the viewer to tell what is a plant and what is just its reflection.

Purrmann repeated this pictorial composition in 1954 in the series “Anemonenstillleben mit antikem Relief” (Lenz/Billeter 1954/08-1954/12), which, however, shows a more conventional and denser pictorial conception.