The skaters

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The skaters (I pattinatori) (Marianne von Werefkin)
The skaters (I pattinatori)
Marianne von Werefkin , 1911
Tempera on cardboard
57 × 75 cm
Fondazione Marianne Werefkin, Museo comunale d'arte, Ascona

The Skater is the title of a painting that the Russian artist Marianne von Werefkin painted in 1911. The work belongs to the holdings of the Fondazione Marianne Werefkin (FMW) in Ascona . There it has the inventory number FMW-0-0-27.

Technology and dimensions

It is a tempera painting on cardboard , 57 × 75 cm.

iconography

Werefkin shows in her picture The Skaters a motif rarely treated in Expressionism . It is illustrated by a nocturnal scene. A strange building with huge angular windows is lit in a fiery yellow inside. Surprisingly, however, it does not emit any light on the dark blue, rounded ice surface. Countless ice-skaters slide counter-clockwise as "black, enchanted figures" over the ice. Crowded together, they are barely recognizable as silhouettes through the glow of the pale greenish moon. It's an enigmatic picture. Lightness and darkness seem to be Werefkin's real theme.

Second or first version of the painting?

As a “picture gift” from the Werefkin, a very similar painting with more representational skaters “untitled [ice skaters, full moon and illuminated pavilion]” came into the possession of Paul and Lily Klee and was dated “1913”, which was shown in an exhibition as early as 1975 was asserted in Villingen-Schwenningen . In 1980, Felix Klee lent the inherited picture to the Wiesbaden Museum. In preparation for the exhibition, research had shown that there was a sketch matching Klee's painting in the Fondazione Marianne Werefkin in a sketchbook of the archive with the date "1911". Consequently, Klee's painting in the Wiesbaden exhibition catalog from 1980 was also dated 1911. In the meantime, significant differences between the Klee and Ascones versions have been found in the arrangement of the skaters, their direction of movement and the number of people shown. While in the Ascones picture, as already observed, the skaters, turning their backs to the viewer, move counter-clockwise, Klee's picture shows an “s-shaped arrangement” of the people on the ice. The so-called S-shape starts at the illuminated building, leads in a left curve to the center of the ice surface, and ends in a right curve on the lower left side of the picture. This time the skaters come towards the viewer, while in the Ascones case they run away from the viewer into the painting. The features mentioned have u. a. the sketch as a preliminary study for Klee's painting.

literature

  • Clemens Weiler : Marianne von Werefkin. In exh. Cat .: Marianne Werefkin 1860–1938. Municipal Museum Wiesbaden 1958
  • Bernd Fäthke: Marianne Werefkin and her influence on the Blue Rider. In: exhib. Cat .: Marianne Werefkin, paintings and sketches. Museum Wiesbaden 1980, p. 14 ff
  • Bernd Fäthke: Marianne Werefkin. Munich 2001, p. 162, fig. 180, ISBN 3-7774-9040-7
  • Isabell Schenk-Weininger (Ed.): Exh. Cat .: Marianne Werefkin, From the Blue Rider to the Great Bear. Municipal Gallery Bietigheim-Bissingen 2014
  • Bernd Fäthke : Marianne Werefkin: Clemens Weiler's Legacy. In: Marianne Werefkin and the Women Artists in her Circle. (Tanja Malycheva and Isabel Wünsche eds.), Leiden / Boston 2016 (English), pp. 8–19, ISBN 978-9-0043-2897-6 , pp. 8–19, here pp. 14–19; JSTOR 10.1163 / j.ctt1w8h0q1.7

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The painting is shown for the first time in: Clemens Weiler: Marianne von Werefkin. In exh. Cat .: Marianne Werefkin 1860-1938. Municipal Museum Wiesbaden 1958, cat.no.21, undated (ill. P. 18)
  2. ^ EW, People's Newspaper of the Pfäffikon District, February 9, 1955
  3. ↑ Katja Förster / Stefan Frey: “In intimate friendship”, Alexej Jawlensky, Paul and Lily Klee, Marianne Werefkin. Zurich 2013, p. 260, color illus. P. 285
  4. ↑ Magarete Willmann (ed.): The Blue Rider and his circle. (The Blue Rider and the New Artists' Association Munich). 24th art exhibition Villingen-Schwenningen 1975, cat. No. 154, b / w-fig. 88
  5. ↑ Inventory number: FMW 46-5-650-a22 / 62 - 63
  6. ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Marianne Werefkin and her influence on the Blue Rider. In: exhib. Cat .: Marianne Werefkin, paintings and sketches. Museum Wiesbaden 1980, b / w-fig. 58, p. 108
  7. ↑ Petra Lanfermann: “You don't need a hundred figures to reproduce a feeling.” The figure cosmos in the work of Marianne Werefkin. In exh. Cat .: Marianne Werefkin, From the Blue Rider to the Great Bear. Municipal Gallery Bietigheim-Bissingen 2014, p. 126
  8. ↑ Petra Lanfermann: “You don't need a hundred figures to reproduce a feeling.” The figure cosmos in the work of Marianne Werefkin. In exh. Cat .: Marianne Werefkin, From the Blue Rider to the Great Bear. Municipal Gallery Bietigheim-Bissingen 2014, p. 126
  9. ↑ Brigitte Salmen (ed.): Marianne von Werefkin in Murnau, art and theory, role models and artist friends. Murnau 2002, cat. No. 69–70, color illus. Pp. 110-111