Person in Front, Heinrich Hoerle
Heinrich Hoerle
Person in Front
DE
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Heinrich Hoerle

Person in Front, 1932


Blatt
425 x 355 mm
Physical Description
...
Inventory Number
17946
Status
Not on display

Texts

About the Work

Heinrich Hoerle, who died at an early age, was one of the Cologne Progressives, a group of artists who turned against bourgeois-capitalist society in the 1920s and early 1930s, but also distanced themselves from the social criticism of New Objectivity. Its founding members – Heinrich Hoerle, Franz Wilhelm Seiwert, and Gerd Arntz – wanted to change society and therefore opted for a reduced, clear language of form which, in its simplicity and unambiguity, was intended to be generally understandable.

The drawing “Vordermann” (literally, the man or person in front) by Heinrich Hoerle is also based on this principle. We see the brightly coloured back of the head of a male figure, the titular “man in front”. Hoerle rendered him as a type-like abbreviation and geometric abstraction – broken down into luminous colour surfaces, just as the composition as a whole, including the landscape with trees in the background, is composed of individual colourful segments of form that are colour-coordinated and richly structured. Hoerle, who, as a self-taught artist, demonstrated a great passion for experimentation throughout his life, discovered wax crayons for himself around 1931/32, which he applied in some segments in long, drawn-out lines, in others with dashed, then again in circular movements, and into the layers of which he scratched in various ways in order to expose the colour tones or the paper underneath. All this lends the drawing, which is, in principle, so strictly constructed, a surprisingly haptic and, above all, lively effect – despite its primarily surface-bound nature. In his own unique way, Hoerle incorporated influences from Pittura Metafisica, Cubism, and Constructivism.

Work Data

Basic Information

Title
Person in Front
Draughtsman
Period Produced
Object Type
Physical Description
...
Material
Technique
Geographic Reference
Label at the Time of Manufacture
Monogrammiert, datiert und nummeriert oben rechts (geritzt): 19h32 / 3
Captions Added Later
Verso unten mittig bezeichnet (mit Bleistift): A738/821 // M82 SPS
Watermark
  • Nicht vorhanden
Work Catalogues
  • Backes 1981, II: Wachsbilder, Nr. 3

Property and Acquisition

Institution
Administration
Collection
Creditline
Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, Eigentum des Städelschen Museums-Vereins e.V.
Picture Copyright
Public Domain

Work Content

Motifs and References

Iconclass

Primary
Secondary

Research and Discussion

Provenance

Object History
Heinrich Hoerle (1895–1936)
verkauft an Alexe Altenkirch (1871–1943), Köln/Kreuznach, vor 1937
Privatbesitz Bayern
Verst. durch Auktionshaus Lempertz, Köln, vermutlich an Gerd Sander (1940–2021), 7. Dezember 1996 (Los 821)
Verst. durch Auktionshaus Grisebach, Berlin, an den Städelschen Museums-Verein e. V., Frankfurt am Main, 10. Juni 2021 (Los 662).

Information

Since 2001, the Städel Museum has systematically been researching the provenance of all objects that were acquired during the National Socialist period, or that changed owners or could have changed owners during those years. The basis for this research is the “Washington Declaration”, also known as the “Washington Conference Principles”, formulated at the 1998 “Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets” and the subsequent “Joint Declaration”.

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  • the type of acquisition and/or the way the object changed hands
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  • the date on which it changed hands

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Last update

15.05.2023