Circus (before the performance)

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Circus (before the performance) (Marianne von Werefkin)
Circus (before the performance)
Marianne von Werefkin , 1910
Tempera painting on cardboard
55 × 90 cm
Leopold Hoesch Museum , Düren

Circus (Before the Performance) is the title of a painting that the Russian artist Marianne von Werefkin painted in Munich in 1910 . The work belongs to the holdings of the Leopold Hoesch Museum in Düren . The painting is preceded by a colorful gouache dated July 1910 in Sketchbook I of the former Felix Klee collection .

Technology and dimensions

It is a tempera painting on cardboard , 55 × 90 cm.

French roots

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: Equestrian in the Fernando Circus , 1887/88

To understand the painting of the Werefkin, three previous French examples and that of Erma Bossi , who was born in the former Austria-Hungary and Werefkin's colleague in the New Artists' Association in Munich , play a role. These are the painting Kunstreiterin (in Cirque Fernando) by Toulouse-Lautrec from 1887/88, Seurat's pointillist painting Au Cirque from 1890/91 and the lithograph Au Cirque by Ibels from 1893.

The most recent comparative example to Werefkin's work is Bossi's 1909 depiction with the title Circus . It refers to widely ramified sources from which the Fauves drew, namely painting and the like. a. by van Gogh , Gauguin and his successors the Nabis . In Lautrec's image a riding acrobat in sidesaddle on a dapple gray . With her short skirt fluttering, she trots into the oval of the ring . A trainer acts with a lowered, touching whip aid. The Gradin , various people sitting and standing there and a clown are cut from the edges of the picture in the Japanese style . It is a relatively sober observation without any sensational highlights.

Georg Seurat: In the circus , 1890/91, oil on canvas

Lautrec's picture is indebted to Seurat's pointillist painting The Circus from 1890/91. In his version, Seurat also shows a gray horse. The trainer appears in an exalted posture and swings the whip in such a way that the horse rushes ahead at a straight gallop . On the bare back of the horse without a dressage saddle or blanket, an artist balances in a breakneck manner on one leg. Seurat tried to exceed the attractiveness of his colleague Lautrec with particularly exciting performances. B. by having a clown appear in the ring , who jumps up with a daring flickfack . A clown in the foreground seems so impressed by the performance that he applauds its courage.

Henri Gabriel Ibels: In the Circus , 1893, lithograph

The lithograph of the poster-like representation of Au Cirque by Ibels is also in the successor of Lautrec's art rider (in Cirque Fernando) . Ibels, who belonged to the inner core of the Nabis, was called "Nabi Journalist" because he often provided illustrations for magazines. In all three cases, the French show a trainer who uses a whip to drive the horse from right to left. In his painting unusually Ibels presented the horse amble . Ibels' two-dimensional painting with pronounced contours reveals a training in the art of Gauguin as well as that of the Japanese . The extreme portrait format, the figures cut from the edge of the picture, as well as the combination of upward and close-up views also indicate a profound knowledge of the Japanese woodcut . In her painting Circus, Bossi quotes various elements from the aforementioned French forerunners and at the same time brings something independent into her pictorial composition. She explains z. B. the construction of the circus tent , shows different masts in front of the round spectator grandstand, which carry the circus roof or lamps. The saddle corridor , above which the Zikusorchester is located, is moved out of the middle . For horse training Bossi as in the French sample images shows a mold that also moves from right to left. An artist juggles on his back . At Ibels, Bossi obviously copied the horse's passage. To redesign the content of the picture, she laid out the arena with a carpet that is decorated with relatively simple oval patterns. Clowns also complement their portrayal.

Werefkin's iconography

Werefkin's sketches that she brought back from a visit to a circus performance radiate cheerful pleasure. They show highlights of animal training, acrobatics and clowning. Worthy of a painting, she chose a scene that does not seem attractive at first. Even the title Circus (Before the Performance) does not associate any special event. No trainer, no horse, no clown can arouse the curiosity of the viewer. In retrospect, as a result of what has been experienced and seen, Werefkin, like Gauguin or the Nabis, put the time of impatient waiting for the first curtain as the most tense. It shows how late spectators enter the tent and delay the start of the performance. The musicians on the gallery tune their instruments again and again. Circus attendants make the final preparations for the first appearance, and the two elegantly dressed entertainers wait until the audience has settled down in order to be able to give the starting signal for the performance to begin. Werefkin spreads a cheerful mood in her picture through the choice of colors. All three basic colors appear in their staging: yellow, red and blue. She arranges them with the complementary colors violet, green and orange in such a way that they appear like a colorful mess, although they are arranged and clearly defined in contours. To this she joins the two non-colors black and white, which van Gogh at the beginning of 1885 still assumed to be “forbidden fruits” as natural participants. Werefkin decorated the liveliness of the actual place of the event, the carpet in the arena, with an unusual variety of colors. Complicated patches of color give it an iridescent dissonant, violet character and make it an anonymous attraction. The further development of the pattern of Bossi's manege carpet, dated 1909, confirms the date of 1910 for Werefkin's painting.

literature

  • Clemens Weiler : Marianne von Werefkin. In exh. Cat .: Marianne Werefkin 1860–1938. Municipal Museum Wiesbaden 1958
  • Bernd Fäthke : Marianne Werefkin. Munich 2001. ISBN 3-7774-9040-7
  • Sandra Uhrig (Ed.): Erma Bossi, Searching for traces. Murnau Castle Museum 2013
  • 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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sandra Uhrig (Ed.): Erma Bossi, A search for traces. Murnau Castle Museum 2013.
  2. ↑ Sandra Uhrig (Ed.): Erma Bossi, A search for traces. Murnau Castle Museum 2013.
  3. ↑ Sandra Uhrig (Ed.): Erma Bossi, A search for traces. Murnau Castle Museum 2013, ill. P. 126.
  4. ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Bossi, their Munich colleagues and their role models. In exh. Cat .: Erma Bossi, A Search for Traces. Murnau Castle Museum 2013, p. 76 ff, Fig. 5–9
  5. ↑ Barbara U. Schmidt: Erma Bossi, Between Paris and Murnau. In: exhib. Cat .: The women's garden, pioneers of modernity in Germany, 1900-1914. Sprengel Museum Hannover 1996, p. 242
  6. ↑ Ursula Perucchi-Petri: The Nabis and Japan. Munich 1976, p. 25, note 85
  7. ^ Anne-Marie Sauvage: Henri-Gabriel Ibels. In: Claire Frèches-Thory and Ursula Perucchi-Petri (eds.): The Nabis, prophets of modernity. Exhib. Cat .: Kunsthaus Zürich 1993, p. 177
  8. ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Bossi, their Munich colleagues and their role models. In exh. Cat .: Erma Bossi, A Search for Traces. Murnau Castle Museum 2013, p. 76 ff, Fig. 5–9.
  9. ^ Johann Fineberg: With the child's eye. Children's drawing and modern art. Munich 1995, p. 24 ff.
  10. ↑ Vincent van Gogh: Complete Letters to Brother Theo. In d. Translated by Eva Schumann. Edited by Fritz Erpel, Bornheim-Merten 1985, Vol. 3, p. 317