"Expressionist couple in yellow-green tones: a dancing woman on Lake Maggiore"

(1849 Nienendorf - 1938 Hagen) Dancing Couple Expressionistic, painted in dominant yellow and green tones, created in 1928, a work from the late period of Christian Rohlfs (1927-1938) at Lake Maggiore. The woman facing the viewer is depicted as a nude, the angular lines of the brushstrokes correspond with the ecstatic expression of the wild dance. The painting was created a year after Rohlfs had made a vacation at Lake Maggiore in 1927 and relocated to Tessin, Switzerland. Rohlfs managed to further enhance his means of expression in his last decade of life, so that his late work can be seen as the quintessence of his painting career. He mostly painted flowers, landscapes, and city views with great intensity of color. The theme of dance runs through Rohlfs' oeuvre since he turned to expressionism in 1906. In a series of works created in 1927/28, to which the present tempera painting belongs, he continued his earlier works from 1908-1913 with dance motifs. They reflect his unbridled, unbroken joy of life even in old age. In the Weimar Republic, Rohlfs was a highly respected artist. In 1919, a major special exhibition was held at the National Gallery in Berlin on the occasion of his 70th birthday, and in 1924 he was honored in Berlin with membership in the Prussian Academy of Arts. In the "Third Reich," Rohlfs was also one of the modern artists condemned as "degenerate" by the National Socialists. Over 400 works were confiscated from German museums in 1937, he received an exhibition ban and was expelled from the Academy of Arts on January 7, 1938, one day before his death. Tempera with chalk reworkings on canvas; signed and monogrammed and dated (19)28. Mentioned in the catalogue raisonné by Vogt and Kocke, no. 729. Provenance: German private collection; Auction Hauswedell & Nolte, Hamburg, 05.06.2013, lot 502; Collection Prof. Dr. Paul Vogt.