ALFRED HENRY MAURER (1868-1932)

Although Alfred Maurer explored the theme of single and double heads throughout his career, those of his later career such as the present Cubist Head are his most complex explorations of the motif. Stacey Epstein writes, "Maurer's late abstract heads, with their intense emotional presence and highly tactile paint quality...erupt into startling images that tend to be violently distorted and subvert physiognomy for the sake of expressiveness...Maurer fuses Cubist structure and Expressionist form into a single forceful composition." (Alfred H. Maurer: Aestheticism to Modernism, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1999, p. 50)