Picture "Steep Bank" (1960s) (Unique piece)
Picture "Steep Bank" (1960s) (Unique piece)
Quick info
unique piece | signed | titled | chalk and ink on paper | framed | size 63.5 x 76 cm
Detailed description
Picture "Steep Bank" (1960s) (Unique piece)
Coloured chalk and ink on paper, c. 1966. Signed and titled on verso. The work is documented in the archive of the Karl and Emy Schmidt-Rottluff Foundation. Motif size/sheet size 40 x 53.5 cm. Size in frame 63.5 x 76 cm as shown.
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About Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
1884-1976
He loved the seclusion of nature, the landscapes of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, which became the place of creation and motif of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff's works. Along with Fritz Bleyl and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, he was a co-founder of the artists' association "Die Brücke", which was founded in 1905. Around that time, he changed his surname by adding his native town of Rottluff.
When he moved to Berlin in 1911, he got inspired by the Futurist, Cubist and African styles of art, which later influenced his work. The artist suffered from the defamation of his art by the Nazi Party. In 1936 they banned him from exhibiting, which was followed five years later by a ban on painting. In a desperate state of mind, Schmidt-Rottluff returned to his hometown and accepted a professorship at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Berlin in the late 1940s. Through his teaching position, he found interest in working on large-format watercolours, which later became characteristic of his work.
A one-of-a-kind or unique piece is a work of art personally created by the artist. It exists only once due to the type of production (oil painting, watercolour, drawing, lost-wax sculpture etc.).
In addition to the classic unique pieces, there are also the so-called "serial unique pieces". They present a series of works with the same colour, motif and technique, manually prepared by the same artist. The serial unique pieces are rooted in "serial art", a genre of modern art that aims to create an aesthetic effect through series, repetitions, and variations of the same objects or themes or a system of constant and variable elements or principles.
The historical starting point is considered to be Claude Monet's "Les Meules" (1890/1891), where, for the first time, a series was created that went beyond a mere group of works. The other artists, who addressed to the serial art, include Claude Monet, Piet Mondrian and above all Gerhard Richter.