CONRAD FELIXMÜLLER (1897-1977)

Born in Dresden in 1897, Conrad Felixmüller was brought up in a working-class environment, his father being a local factory blacksmith. After studying at the Königliche Kunstakademie in Dresden and at the end of the First World War in 1918, Felixmüller married Londa, Baroness von Berg, and their first child, Luca was born. These two events engendered a significant change of mood in Felixmüller's paintings, as he abandoned the political and social criticisms of the late teens and early 1920s and moved towards the depiction of the happy, tranquil life he shared with his family. Stylistically too, Felixmüller began to further develop his own brand of Expressionism towards a very unique personal style which was more naturalistic, brighter and in keeping with his newly found domesticity.

The present work, painted in 1926, belongs to a transition period in Felixmüller's works. The subject matter has become more saccharine but the palette and manner of execution are no less vibrant and powerful than his most successful Ruhr compositions. Felixmüller succeeded in creating a unique relationship between himself and his models, and produced at this time some of his most intimate and touching works, corroborating his own claim that 'My life began with strife, good luck, pain and joy, and hopefully that is how it will end, giving people pleasure' (Felixmüller, Klotzsche, October 1918, 'Mein+Werden', in Conrad Felixmüller: von ihm - über ihn, p. 30).

During the years of the Third Reich, Felixmüller eschewed politics and in fact, most of his paintings after 1933 pay homage to his family, his favourite models being his wife Londa and his two sons Titus and Luca. However, this change of direction did not spare him from political attention: forty of his works were shown in the Entartete Kunst exhibition of 1933 and Felixmüller was one of the many victims of Wolfgang Willrich's Säuberung des Kunsttempels ('Cleansing of the Temple of Art'), having 151 paintings confiscated and destroyed in 1937-1938.