About the work
The still life accompanied Karl Schmidt-Rottluff throughout his life. It placed the non-European artefacts of his own collection, including masks, pipes or sculptures, in the picture, but also vegetables and fruit, toys and bottles, potted plants and bouquets of flowers, breakfast dishes and even clutter.
His floral still life of 1960 presents the painter in the vernal colours and with the angular contouring of the objects so typical of his late work. Two small vases on a table, beneath them a little blanket, the view in the background of a window with yellow curtains - an unspectacular motif that is liberated from the everyday routine by painting. The single branch of the pretty phlox, with its small, decorative blossoms, is joined by a taller vase containing several Star of Bethlehem flowers with grape-shaped panicles of white blossoms. "I always wanted to show the being, the quiet life of things”, Schmidt-Rottluff emphasised in 1960.
Text authored and provided by Dr. Doris Hansmann, Art historian
Studies of art history, theater, film and television, English and Romance Languages at the University of Cologne, doctorated in 1994. Research assistant at the Art Museum Düsseldorf. Lecturer and project manager at Wienand Verlag, Cologne. Freelance work as an author, editor and book producer for publishers and museums in Germany and abroad. From 2011 chief editor at Wienand Verlag, from 2019 to 2021 senior editor at DCV, Dr. Cantz’sche Verlagsgesellschaft, Berlin. Numerous publications on the art of the 20th and 21st centuries.
