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Untitled, 1953
Pastel on paper
31,2 × 24,4 cm
Provenance:
Estate of Max Ackermann
Kunstsalon Döbele, Dettelbach
Private collection, Munich
Kunstsalon Döbele, Dettelbach
Private collection, Munich
About the artist
Max Ackermann was born in Berlin in 1887 and grew up in Ilmenau (Thuringia) from 1891. Studies: 1906-1907 Weimar School of Arts and Crafts under Henry van de Velde, 1908-1909 Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, 1909-1910 Munich Academy of Fine Arts under Franz von Stuck, 1912-1913 Stuttgart Academy of Fine Arts under Richard Pötzelberger. In Stuttgart, acquaintance with Adolf Hölzel, through whom he received his first impulses in the direction of non-objectivity. Worked as a freelance artist in Stuttgart from 1913. 1915-1917 Drafted into military service as a Landsturmmann. Due to his war experiences and his socio-political stance, he turned to a critical realism. From around 1920 he also became involved with Constructivism, and in 1926 with the geometrically stylised figures of Fernand Léger. Development of typified dance and gymnastics depictions. First solo exhibition at the Württembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart in 1924. From around 1930, in addition to abstract-figurative works, increasingly purely abstract form and colour compositions. Due to National Socialist art policy, he and his wife moved back to Hornstaad on Lake Constance in 1936. In 1937, Ackermann was discredited as "degenerate" and banned from his profession. From 1941, dissatisfied with the "encoding of abstraction and subject matter", he increasingly created abstract works and gradually abandoned the subject matter with the aim of "absolute painting". In 1943, Ackermann's studio in Stuttgart was destroyed and with it the majority of his early works. Increasingly recognised after the Second World War. In 1950, Ackermann became a member of the "Deutscher Künstlerbund" and the "Sezession Oberschwaben-Bodensee", in whose exhibitions he regularly took part. He finally decided in favour of abstraction. In 1955, the first monograph on Max Ackermann is published, written by Will Grohmann. The following year, a major exhibition of his work at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and in 1957 he was awarded the title of professor. 1967 First retrospective (with stops at the Mittelrhein-Museum, Koblenz, Kunstverein Wolfsburg, Pfalzgalerie, Kaiserslautern, among others). Increasing health problems in the following years. In 1972 he moved to Oberlengenhardt, in March 1975 to Unterlengenhardt together with his second wife and their son Peter. Max Ackermann dies on 14 November 1975. In December 1975-February 1976, the Stuttgart City Gallery honours him with a memorial exhibition.
Max Ackermann travelled to Provence in 1953. The landscape he saw there, which Ackermann found "harsher" than that of Lake Constance, became a new source of inspiration for the painter with its "vegetation" and "rocky nests" (Max Ackermann). Although Ackermann was already consistently working non-representationally at this time, he developed his compositions using colour, form and line from "experience" and "introspection" (Max Ackermann). He sees colour as the primary design element in his compositions.
Ackermann's 1953 pastel is dominated by the colour blue, which is partly heightened with white to form a light blue and is separated from the darker ground by black contour lines. In the middle of the composition there are small coloured accents in orange, the complementary colour of blue, as well as in red, yellow, black and white. "One glance over the blue sea and the heart is refreshed," wrote Max Ackermann in 1967: "If I transfer this sea blue onto a given surface from edge to edge of the picture, something beneficial has happened. If I open up this blue surface in the sense of counterpoint, I have a blue that moves within itself. Our eye demands the complement orange, which produces the fission products lemon yellow and bright red. If these atomised accents are organically incorporated into the blue - then I have sung the praises of the blue."
Ackermann's 1953 pastel is dominated by the colour blue, which is partly heightened with white to form a light blue and is separated from the darker ground by black contour lines. In the middle of the composition there are small coloured accents in orange, the complementary colour of blue, as well as in red, yellow, black and white. "One glance over the blue sea and the heart is refreshed," wrote Max Ackermann in 1967: "If I transfer this sea blue onto a given surface from edge to edge of the picture, something beneficial has happened. If I open up this blue surface in the sense of counterpoint, I have a blue that moves within itself. Our eye demands the complement orange, which produces the fission products lemon yellow and bright red. If these atomised accents are organically incorporated into the blue - then I have sung the praises of the blue."