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Artist or Maker: Heinrich Campendonk (1889-1957)

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Description: Landschaft mit Pferden
signed with the initial and dated 'C 15' (lower right)
oil on canvas
17 3/4 x 17 3/4 in. (45 x 45 cm.)
Painted in 1915

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Provenance: Galerie Der Sturm [Herwarth Walden], Berlin.
Galerie Ludwig Schames, Frankfurt.
Galerie Cazeau-Béraudière, Paris.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.

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Notes: THE PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE AMERICAN COLLECTOR

This work is sold with a photo-certificate from Dr Andrea Firmenich dated Köln, 20.2.2004.

Prancing through the radiant countryside, the horses in Landschaft mit Pferden, painted in 1915, appear joyous, free of the concerns and constraints of the world of humans. These are spiritual creatures, in touch with nature, and a part of nature. Campendonk presented animals in his paintings as the embodiment of spiritual innocence. It is through images such as Landschaft mit Pferden that he sought to present the viewer with new votive pictures relevant to the modern era. The bright colours and the figures of the horses are painted in a manner that deliberately evokes the naïve religious art so beloved of the Blaue Reiter painters, yet also betrays the complex and sophisticated influence of theories of colourism, and also of modern abstract painting. It is a tribute to the quality of this bold and colourist painting that it passed through Herwarth Walden's Galerie Der Sturm in Berlin, a pioneering gallery that hosted many of the most important early exhibitions of Expressionist, and indeed modern, art in all of Germany during this crucial period.

The theme of horses in particular was one that was espoused by Campendonk and likewise by his friend and artistic mentor, Franz Marc. These creatures are presented without reins or saddles they appear to be wild horses, emphasising their freedom from the human yoke and making them all the more romantic a phenomenon. The horse in nature tells of a recovery of innocence: Landschaft mit Pferden is an offer of hope to the people of the modern era, all the more pertinent a message during the early years of the First World War, when it was painted. The War had a huge impact on Campendonk and his Blaue Reiter colleagues: many fled the chaos and the killing, while August Macke in 1914 and Marc in 1915 fell prey to its ravages. The message of hope and salvation embodied in the wild and colourful horses in Landschaft mit Pferden is made all the more poignant by this, and by the sense that the rural idyll that Campendonk had sought so hard to live in was being shattered by the machines of the war. He offers the Garden of Eden as an image of humanity in an age when humanity was being found in all too short supply.

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium.