The Wendelsweg in Frankfurt am Main
The Wendelsweg in Frankfurt am Main only briefly The Wendelsweg (oil on canvas, painted in 1928 in Frankfurt am Main , dimensions 70 × 44 cm) is a painting by Max Beckmann from the Expressionist period .
Subject and origin of the picture
Frankfurter Wendelsweg runs parallel to Darmstädter Landstrasse to the south. The northern part is in a built-up area, the southern part leads through the Frankfurt city forest . Beckmann's apartment was located on Dielmannstraße near the northern part of the street on Sachsenhäuser Berg shown here before he moved to Steinhausenstraße 7 in 1926. Beckmann took the street and the parents' house of the Schubert family , a brewery company family from Frankfurt am Main, as their theme. He painted the picture for the sake of Johanna Schubert, the wife and mother of the family with whom he was friends.
description
The picture is 70.5 cm high and 44.5 cm wide. Related material is oil paint on canvas. The dominant colors are white, green and brown, the design is typical expressionistically, almost cubistically distorted. The composition is dominated by the street, the Wendelsweg , which stands up like a steep white tower in the left third of the picture and directs the gaze to two pedestrians, who in the lower part are close to one another in the direction of the lower edge of the picture, out of the field of vision Wandering viewer. Beckmann downsized the brewhouse of the Schubert's family villa to make the house appear larger. The balcony of the villa, which cannot be seen from the street itself, but was of particular importance to the woman, as all of her eight sons saw the light of day in this balcony room, is marked by a bright orange awning. Beckmann's signature is at the bottom right of the picture as Beckmann F. 28 .
Art historical positioning
The picture Der Wendelsweg is not one of Max Beckmann's best-known works and was sold at an auction in Zurich in 1930 for only 4200 francs. It can be assumed that the low price is due to the fact that Beckmann was counted among the degenerate artists . Today it hangs in the entrance to the Kunsthalle Kiel .
literature
- Max Beckmann, Städtische Galerie im Städelschen Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main, 1983, p. 144.