Carmencita (Lovis Corinth)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Carmencita (Lovis Corinth)
Carmencita
Lovis Corinth , 1924
Oil on canvas
130 × 90 cm
Städel , Frankfurt am Main

Carmencita is the title of the last painting by the German painter Lovis Corinth by his wife Charlotte Berend-Corinth . The picture was taken in 1924 after a costume party, his wife is wearing the costume of a Spanish noblewoman in the picture. Today the picture is part of the collection in the Städel Art Institute and Municipal Gallery (Städel) in Frankfurt am Main , which it acquired in 1959.

Image description

The picture shows Charlotte Berend-Corinth, almost life-size, standing in a three-quarter portrait in a black costume. In the catalog raisonné Charlotte Berend-Corinth described the picture with the words “Charlotte Corinth in black lace over yellow silk, with red flowers in her hair. In the background a burning chandelier and furniture illuminated in bright red. After a costume party in Berlin, Klopstockstrasse, painted. "

The figure of the sitter has moved from the center of the picture to the right side, where, standing in the foreground, it occupies almost two thirds of the picture width and the entire height. It is turned slightly to the right, but looks straight at the viewer. The face is surrounded by dark hair adorned with red flowers. The left arm is propped up at the waist, on the opposite side of the waist there is a red bouquet of flowers. The right arm lies at an angle in front of the chest, the hand holds a white fan and thus covers the lower edge of the deeply cut neckline , which emphasizes the chest. According to Andrea Bärnreuther, the opulence of the breasts seems to flow out of the robe. According to Carl Georg Heise, the depiction makes her appear "matronly powerful, which in no way corresponded to external reality."

The background in the upper left corner is formed by the named chandelier and a suite made of light red furniture. Below the furniture the background is light, on the middle left edge of the picture the painting is dated 1924 and signed with the words

- Carmencita -
Lovis Corinth
1924

The coloring of the figure emerges very dominantly in this picture, while the motif is strongly resolved by the quick and rough brushwork. The dominant feature is the black of the costume and the hair, which covers the yellow-green of the silk dress and "picks it up like fire". On the left arm this black becomes transparent and reveals the arm, here the colors change between black, blue, purple and dark red. Particularly noticeable are the red flowers in the hair and under the breast, "which pop out of the picture together with the red made-up lips" as well as the white accentuation of the breasts created by the fan and the cleavage.

Background and origin

The painting Carmencita was created a few days after a costume party that took place on February 28 in the Berlin Secession . Charlotte Berendt-Corinth wore the Spanish woman's costume and accompanied her husband to this party in the family's private living room. With the help of the bright chandelier, an artificial festive atmosphere was created, with the opera Carmen by Georges Bizet playing in the background as background music for the scene.

In a traditional photograph, Charlotte Berendt-Corinth can be seen in the costume while she was the model for Lovis Corinth.

Classification in the work of Corinth

Portrait of President Friedrich Ebert , 1924

The Carmencita is the last portrait of his wife Charlotte Berendt-Corinth before his death in 1925. Since his first meeting with his wife, Corinth has painted around 80 paintings of her in different poses and life situations, some alone and some with him or the whole family . It is regarded as one of a series of visionary portraits of the late work that Corinth painted between 1923 and 1925 and which, in addition to Carmencita, also included the portraits of Bernt Grönvold , Leonid Pasternak , Herbert Eulenberg , Dr. Arthur Rosin , Georg Brandes and also that of Reich President Friedrich Ebert and "the earlier motor skills of the permanent style and subject change in the gestures of painting treatment" are transformed, "which gives everything that appears a threatening and at the same time endangered presence". Georg Heise, like many others, ascribes particular importance to the portraits of Corinth's last decade, during which Corinth rose to the highest achievement and astonishingly approaches the painters of the younger generation. According to Heise, he “takes into his pictures what his inner eye sees and what has the same reality for him as the outside world. There was talk of visions that attack him. "

Heise relates the change in painting style to both the landscape paintings at Walchensee and the numerous still lifes of the late phase as well as to Corinth's portrait painting. According to his interpretation, they are "externally freer from the model and at the same time deeper and more concise in their characteristics." In doing so, he draws a parallel to Oskar Kokoschka's psychograms , whereby the two artists demonstrably did not influence each other. The portrayed in the pictures are "completely removed from the environment, only give the spiritual face and are painted with an unparalleled inner furore."

  • Portrait of the painter Bernt Grönvolt , 1923

  • Portrait of the painter Leonid Pasternak , 1923

  • Portrait of Dr. Alfred Kuhn , 1923

  • Portrait of the poet Herbert Eulenberg , 1924

Heise also relates this description to the portraits of his wife, about whom he writes: “The familiar features of the wife become significant and general. The external similarity is limited to clearly defined fixed points, the play of light and shadow lifts the appearance into the unreal and yet allows the essential features to speak with almost uncanny clarity. ”Referring directly to the Carmencita, he adds:“ It was still the same back then beautiful woman whose features he used to go down so lovingly? [...] But something else has taken on artistic form: the personality full of character, an image of vitality that manifests itself powerfully in contrast to the tinsel world. "

  • Portrait of Charlotte Corinth in a green velvet jacket , 1921

  • Wilhelmine with a yellow hat , 1924

  • Thomas in armor , 1925

  • Last self-portrait , 1925

With The Trojan Horse , however, he took up a mythological motif again in the same year. Other central works of the year are Wilhelmine with a yellow hat and his self-portrait with a palette , in the following year 1925 he also painted a portrait of his son Thomas Corinth (Thomas in armor) in addition to some pictures of the Walchensee . The last works created in 1925 were The Beautiful Woman Imperia , his Last Self-Portrait and his Depiction of Ecce Homo .

Exhibitions and provenance

The Carmencita remained in the possession of Charlotte Berend-Corinth even after Lovis Corinth's death in 1925.

It was exhibited at the Academy of Arts in Berlin in 1924, the year it was made . Further exhibitions took place in the following years at the Kunsthaus Zürich in 1925, the National Gallery in Berlin and at the Kunstverein Frankfurt in 1926, at the Sächsischer Kunstverein in the Dresden Kunsthalle , the Kunstverein Heidelberg and the anniversary art exhibition in Kassel in 1927, the international art exhibition in Venice in 1928 at the Exhibition at the New Secession in Munich and at the Hagenbund in Vienna in 1929 and again at the Kunsthaus Zürich in 1933.

Further exhibitions took place only after the Second World War, after Charlotte Berend-Corinth moved to the United States in 1939 and took her collection with her. The picture was shown in America, first in Canada in the National Gallery of Canada , Ottawa, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts , Montreal, as part of a traveling exhibition of Corinth's works. Further stations in 1951 were the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art , The Art Gallery of Toronto , the Detroit Institute of Arts , the Milwaukee Art Institute , the William Rockham Nelson Gallery of Art (now Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art ) in Kansas City, Portland Art Museum , the Art Center in La Jolla and in 1952 the MH de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts .

In 1958 the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg showed the picture in a retrospective on the occasion of Corinth's 100th birthday for the first time after the end of World War II in Germany, with the support of Charlotte Berend-Corinth. In the same year it was presented in the Städtische Galerie Munich and in 1959 in the Tate Gallery in London. Then, in the same year, it was acquired by Ernst Holzinger for the Städelsche Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt am Main, where it has since been shown in the permanent exhibition in the Hall of the German Impressionists.

reception

Unlike many later works Corinth, including about the Ecce Homo of 1925, the Carmencita was at the seizure of power of the Nazis privately owned by Charlotte Berendt Corinth and was so before the seizure in pursuit of Degenerate Art , which in 1937 culminated, preserved become. Since the painting was taken with the family when the family moved to New York City, it remained in the family's possession.

Letters from or to Lovis Corinth referring to the picture are not known. However, Charlotte Berend-Corinth describes in a diary entry from November 9, 1925, published in her autobiographical book Mein Leben mit Lovis Corinth 1958, how this picture came about (see above). She also makes reference to the origins in the book Images of his wife , edited by Carl Georg Heise , from the same year.

The neurologists Hansjörg Bäzner and Michael Hennerici from the University Hospital Mannheim list the picture Carmencita as an example of the “increased subjectivity” caused by a neglect as the late effects of his stroke in 1912, in particular “in comparison to a painting of a very similar motif from 1908 'Die black mask '".

supporting documents

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Charlotte Berend-Corinth : Lovis Corinth: The paintings . Revised by Béatrice Hernad. Bruckmann Verlag, Munich 1958, 1992; BC 961, p. 201. ISBN 3-7654-2566-4 .
  2. ^ A b c d Andrea Bärnreuther: Carmencita, 1924. In: Peter-Klaus Schuster , Christoph Vitali, Barbara Butts (ed.): Lovis Corinth . Prestel Munich 1996; Pp. 308-309. ISBN 3-7913-1645-1 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Carl Georg Heise : Introduction. In: Carl Georg Heise (Ed.): Lovis Corinth. Portraits of his wife. Work monographs on the fine arts in Reclam's Universal Library Reclam Verlag, Stuttgart 1958.
  4. ↑ a b Charlotte Berend-Corinth : To the pictures. In: Carl Georg Heise (Ed.): Lovis Corinth. Portraits of his wife. Work monographs on the fine arts in Reclam's Universal Library Reclam Verlag, Stuttgart 1958.
  5. ↑ Andrea Bärnreuther: Biography. In: Peter-Klaus Schuster , Christoph Vitali, Barbara Butts (eds.): Lovis Corinth . Prestel Munich 1996; 189. ISBN 3-7913-1645-1 .
  6. ^ Georg Bussmann: Lovis Corinth Carmencita - Painting on the Edge. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1985. ISBN 3-596-23918-4 .
  7. ^ H. Bäzner, MG Hennerici: Stroke consequences with the painter Lovis Corinth Nervenarzt 77, 2006; p. 51-57 doi : 10.1007 / s00115-006-2140-9

literature