Lot 14 | Franz Radziwill | Das Wattenmeer

A leading representative of ‘New Objectivity’

Franz Radziwill is now considered one of the leading representatives of ‘New Objectivity’, the art movement that became a household name in 1925 with a major exhibition at the Kunsthalle Mannheim. This event, which took place one hundred years ago, is now commemorated by two exhibitions: in Vienna (Leopold Museum) and Mannheim (Kunsthalle). Franz Radziwill is at the centre of both exhibitions – and at the same time, as a ‘magical realist’, he stands alone. The background can be found in this extraordinarily intense painting: ‘The Wadden Sea’.

Dangast

When Franz Radziwill, just twenty-five years old, was chasing through noisy days and nights in Berlin in 1920, he met Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Schmidt-Rottluff sensed what was going on in his young colleague's mind: ‘Franz Radziwill, I used to be in Dangast a lot. This is something for you!’ And indeed he did. The aspiring ‘representative of a new generation of creators’ travelled to the remote fishing village on the Jadebusen, south of Wilhelmshaven, and stayed.

For the next sixty years until his death on 12 August 1983, he lived and worked between calm and storm under a constantly changing sky, in the eternal rhythm of the tides and that expanse that extends to the horizon – and beyond. Finally, he was able to summarise: ‘No picture of mine is possible without Dangast.’

The painting ‘The Wadden Sea’ was created in 1930 from the abundance of what he had seen and experienced. A lonely sailing boat glides through the waves of the rising tide towards the west, the setting sun – and infinity. At the helm: the painter.

Gerd Presler