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Artist or Maker: Heinrich Campendonk (1889-1957)
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Provenance: Claus Runkel Fine Art, London, 1986.
Leonard Hutton Galleries, New York, 1986.
Galerie Harald Wolf, Munich, 1987.
Anonymous sale, Christie's, London, 30 November 1987, lot 51.
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner.
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Exhibited: London, Claus Runkel Fine Art, 1986 (illustrated p. 57).
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Literature: Weltkunst, Munich, vol. 57, 1987 (illustrated p. 281).
A. Firmenich, Heinrich Campendonk 1889-1957, Leben und expressionistisches Werk, Recklinghausen, 1989, no. 375 (illustrated pl. 22).
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Notes: PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE EUROPEAN COLLECTION
Painted in 1913, Rote Kuh vor Häusern is filled with the expressive colourism and the interest in nature that had led to his being embraced by the Blaue Reiter movement. Since 1911, Campendonk had been living in the countryside in Sindelsdorf. He had been invited there by Franz Marc, although they had not met. Instead, they had come to know of his works through August Macke, whose cousin shared a studio with Campendonk in Krefeld.
Campendonk flourished in his new surroundings and with his new, like-minded colleagues. The themes of nature and spirituality came to dominate his works with a new vigour, and as early as 1911, the year of his first contact with the movement, his pictures were exhibited in the first Blaue Reiter exhibition. Likewise, his interest in colour was cemented by his exposure to Marc and Macke and their works. With these as a catalyst, he developed a new and intense visual idiom and colourism, lending his pictures a searing energy.
Also in the first Blaue Reiter exhibition and published in the movement's Almanach the next year were paintings by Robert Delaunay. Rote Kuh vor Häusern is remarkable for the almost Orphic use of colour fields, reminiscent of Delaunay's works. Here, the burning intensity of Orphism has been condensed into the figurative forms of the village and the cow itself. The almost abstract tapestry of brightly coloured fields of paint with which Campendonk has depicted the scene therefore combine the timeless and spiritual interest in nature with an intense and dancing modernism. At the same time, the mountains recall the paintings of his friend and fellow Blaue Reiter member, Kandinsky.
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