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Literature: Otto Mueller - Verlorenes Paradies - Werke aus der Sammlung Karsch, G. Leistner et al., Kunstforum Ostdeutsche Galerie Regensburg (exh. cat.), Regensburg, 2006 - 2007.
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Notes: From a Private German Collection
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Unlike the other, younger members of Die Brücke - Kirchner, Heckel, Schmidt-Rottluff and Pechstein - who alternated between the themes of big city life and the nude in nature, Otto Mueller was only ever interested in his very personal and intimate Arcadian dream. Withdrawing from the modern world, he dwelt in a bucolic fantasy: a patch of forest in summer, a small lake, dunes, where slender women and youths bath, rest and embrace in the midst of unspoilt nature. In variation after variation he pursued this theme with the intensity of an erotic obsession. Yet his gaze is not lustful, but full of nostalgia for youth and innocence, for a lost paradise.
The present, subtly hand-coloured Zigeuner-Liebespaar('Gipsy Lovers') is a particularly charming, highly concentrated expression of the gentle, melancholy eroticism that lies at the heart of Mueller's art.
Dieter Posselt regards the hand-coloured lithographs as a separate group of works within Mueller's oeuvre. He describes them as 'hybrids', part print, part watercolour, and estimates that he created no more than 150-200 examples in his entire career. Large, extensively coloured lithographs such as the present work are great rarities and rank amongst the best and most desirable of Mueller's works.
(Posselt, 'Die Hybriden Otto Muellers', in: Otto Mueller - Verlorenes Paradies, p. 91 ff.)
The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Professor Dr. L. Reidemeister, then director of the Brücke-Museum, Berlin, in 1985.