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Artist or Maker: 1880-1938
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Dimensions: 80.5 by 70cm.
31 5/8 by 27 1/2in.
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Provenance: Wilhelm R. Valentiner, Raleigh (1937)
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland (1965)
Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, Inc., New York (1966)
Private Estate, Berlin (Sale: Christie's, London, 1st December 1986, lot 40)
Sale: Villa Grisebach, Berlin, 27th November 1992, lot 27
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner
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Exhibited: Detroit, Institute of Art, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1937
New York, Buchholz Gallery (Curt Valentin), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1937, no. 12
Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Sport and Circus, 1950
Raleigh, The North Carolina Museum of Art, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1958, no. 40, illustrated in the catalogue
Seattle, Seattle Art Museum; Pasadena, Art Museum and Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. A Retrospective Exhibition, 1968-69, no. 67, illustrated in the catalogue
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Literature: Donald E. Gordon, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1968, p. 408, no. 976, illustrated; pl. 108, illustrated
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Notes: Discussing the present work, Donald Gordon wrote: "The Hockey Players from 1934 is one of a group of works from the mid-1930s which climax a decade-long concern with subject matter drawn from the world of sport. These subjects are particularly suitable to the pictorial rendition of movement, [...] and the 1934 painting is quite effective in this regard. Not only is the composition organized in undulating curvilinear rhythms, but the series of patterned blue stripes to the left of each skating figure is optically suggestive of swirling action on the white ice background. The reds and blues in the central figures' uniforms also provide a color counterpoint to the blue and olive tones of their opponents' clothes. The two-dimensional quality of the composition is stressed by the repetition of the parallel hockey-stick diagonals, and by the transparent color planes for the figures. This intricate interaction between narrative movement and abstract design echoes Klee's most successful work half a dozen years earlier, but it is to be traced ultimately to the similar synthesis first sought by some artists among the Nabi generation four decades before. It is uncanny, for example, how closely Kirchner's late Hockey Players parallels the rhythmical arabesque of figures against a flat ground in Valotton's The Waltz, dated in 1893" (D. Gordon, op. cit., pp. 139-140).
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