Konrad Cramer (1888-1963)

After experimenting with Cubism and Kandinsky-like Improvisations, Konrad Cramer began to create symbolic compositions, often meditating, as in the present Abstraction, on the relationships between man (represented as a T-shape) and woman (represented as a U-shape). As Hilton Kramer reflected in 1981, “Paintings of this early period (circa 1914-15) bear an uncanny resemblance to the symbolic abstractions that the American painter Marsden Hartley - strangely enough! - was producing in Cramer's native Germany at the very same time.” (“Art: Rediscovering a Painter-Photographer,” The New York Times, December 18, 1981, p. 31) However, there is no evidence Cramer was familiar with Hartley’s work from this period, and his paintings employ a distinct hieratic-type symbolism that reflects his unique approach to spiritualism. Here, as Emily Lembo suggests, the blazing sun, radiating eyes and cross-like pose of the anthropomorphic T-shape “could be read as a dedication to mankind…this painting indicates Cramer’s search for the spiritual, an entry point into a realm he had always longed for, using the set of symbols he created as vessels.” (“Konrad Cramer,” The Scharf Collection: A History Revealed, New York, 2018, p. 94)