Between Red and Blue: A Modern Dialogue – TEFAF Maastricht 2025
Galerie Henze & Ketterer
11 days left
We are delighted to invite you to our presentation at TEFAF Maastricht 2025.
We present a curated presentation dedicated to the theme "Between Red and Blue: A Modern Dialogue" with selected artworks by Conrad Felixmüller, George Grosz, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein, Hans Purrmann, Christian Rohlfs and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff.
The direct, personal and emotional expressiveness of the artist was the focus of expressionist works of art, which can still fully unfold their effect through colour today.
Between Red and Blue: A Modern Dialogue
The encounter of strong red and blue has an attractive, exciting and thrilling effect for one simple reason: the strongest colour contrasts meet in the red-blue tone. Red light has a stimulating and warming effect on the observer, while blue light has a calming and cooling effect. Red stands for love and passion, while blue can be associated with infinity, peace and trust.
Colours have always played a central role in art, as they create emotions and moods within us, convey the messages of works of art, can strengthen or weaken them and significantly influence the visual perception of the viewer.
Expressionism, to which our gallery has dedicated itself for decades, thrives on the strong expression of colour, and the “Brücke” artists' association even made the use of a segmented, high-contrast colour scheme the central stylistic device of its art, thus shaping modern art and subsequent generations. It is therefore worth focusing on colour as a theme for this year's presentation at TEFAF Maastricht 2025. We have searched our collection for works in which the red-blue tone plays an essential role, sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker, but always full of expression, character and emotion.
At our booth 471 we are showing selected paintings and works on paper by Conrad Felixmüller, George Grosz, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein, Hans Purrmann, Christian Rohlfs and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff.
Thaw (In Klotzsche, Dresden), 1922 by Conrad Felixmüller
One of Felixmüller's characteristic vertical formats, where the height is more than twice the width and which he used especially for urban landscapes.
From 1918 to 1925 Conrad Felixmüller from Dresden lived in nearby Klotzsche, a suburb, in Gartenstrasse 10. Here you may see the view from the window of this house, when ice and snow turned blue under a cloudy sky and rising winter temperatures and an evening sun under clouds from the upper right brings some red spots on houses and paths.
Tauwetter (Thaw), 1922, oil on canvas, 111 x 53 cm
Selfportrait with Nude, 1937 by George Grosz
The three-quarter nude shows the back view of a Rubens-like woman from her thighs to her shoulders. While her head is above the picture field, the painter has portrayed himself on the right-hand edge of the picture.
The programmatic painting Selfportrait with Nude is a hymn to the artist's wife Eva in his studio in the USA . One of the central works in the later oeuvre of George Grosz.
Selbstportrait mit Akt (Selfportrait with Nude), 1937, oil on canvas, 72 x 58 cm
Alster Landscape, 1913 by Erich Heckel
Erich Heckel's landscape was painted during a summer's stay at the country house of the art patron Gustav Schiefler in Mellingstadt on the green outskirts of Hamburg. This painting captures the river and both its banks with rapid and at times coarse brush strokes that seem to hark back to the early days of the “Brücke”. Heckel here depicts nature in its virtually pristine state, the implied tranquillity of the scene forming an uncanny contrast with the turbulent water of the river.
Alsterlandschaft (Alster Landscape), 1913, oil and tempera on canvas, 69,5 x 79 cm.
Still-life with Pitchers and Candle, 1927 by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
In his first two years in Davos, 1917 and 1918, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner painted a total of 14 still-lifes. Our "Stilleben mit Krügen und Kerze" (Still-life with Pitchers and Candle) cannot be by any means stylistically integrated into this series of still-lifes still marked by a fierce Expressionism. With it‘s mellow forms and vibrating outlines, with it’s folded changes in perspective and two-dimensional, dissonant coulourfields, this painting rather joins the paintings of the later year 1927.
Stillleben mit Krügen und Kerze (Still-life with Pitchers and Candle), 1927
Vase with Flowers, 1915 by Emil Nolde
Viewed at close quarters, the relatively small, blue-white vase becomes a forceful element of the composition and, despite its lightness of colour against the red tablecloth and dark blue wall, presses the tightly bunched, violet irises against the top edge of the painting. Its shadow falls onto the red tablecloth and the blue wall, creating a dark, negative form that fills the right-hand half of the painting and lends the composition its exciting, almost precarious equilibrium
Vase mit Blumen ( Vase with Flowers), 1915, oil on canvas, 37 x 32 cm.
Valais Barns, 1923 by Max Pechstein
In a very typical way for the expressionnist composition, the foreground looms majestically, here one of the numerous traditional haystacks.
The warm light of sun-set shines on the derelict, russet stack, resting on grey granit rocks, under a high sky full of sulfurous clouds and the snow-covered, blue mountains. Hermann Max Pechstein truly raised a unique pictorial monument for these barns so typical for the Matter-Valley.
Walliser Hütten (Valais Barns), 1923, oil on canvas, 72,5 x 83,5 cm.
Fountain at Villa Romana, 1938 by Hans Purrmann
Hans Purrmann may have been the best known and most successful of the painters who retreated to Italy after 1933. Favorable circumstances gave him relatively free and steady work opportunities in the country of refuge, namely as director of the Villa Romana.
The painting "Fountain in the Villa Romana" is the main work in Purrmann's artistic engagement with the buildings and the garden of the Villa Romana.
Brunnen der Villa Romana (Fountain at Villa Romana), 1938, oil on canvas, 81 x 100 cm.
Still-Life with Wooden Sculpture, 1949 by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
When the artist died in 1970, he had given birth to a large late-oeuvre, which without denying it’s expressionist background, responded to the call of the present, as our still-life as one his strongest late works, proves.
The way the younger generation painted in 1949 if they had not chosen before 1948 to paint completey abstract. Karl Schmidt-Rottluff stays true to himself, he keeps up his former strong forms and colours and even manages to enhance his qualities.
Stillleben mit Holzplastik (Still-Life with Wooden Sculpture), 1949, oil on canvas, 80 x 80 cm.
