EBERHARD VIEGENER

(Soest 1890 – 1967 Bilme)

Still life with ceramic vessels and dice

Signed with monogram and dated lower right EV48

Oil on panel

9 1/2 x 16 1/4 inches (24 x 41 cm)

Eberhard Viegener began his career as a decorative painting apprentice his father’s company at the age of fourteen. After completing his training Viegener went on to study art in Hagen, after which he worked as a decorative artist in Zurich and Klosters.  He dedicated a great deal of time and attention to the Modernist works in the Folkwang Museum and found inspiration in the works of Ferdinand Hodler (1853-1918). Viegener returned to his hometown of Soest in 1914, where his painting continued to be influenced by the Expressionist style of his friends and fellow painters Christian Rohlfs (1849-1938) and Soest-born artist Wilhelm Morgner (1891-1917). In the 1910s he experimented extensively with color and texture, looking to the early works of the Blaue Reiter artists Alexej Jawlensky (1864-1941) and Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944). Due to poor health Viegener was exempted from serving in World War I, which allowed him to exhibit at the Juryfreie Kunstausstellung in 1916.

The course of Viegener’s career shifted favorably when he became acquainted with the famed Jewish art dealer Alfred Flechteim (1878-1937) through his participation in the artists’ association Das Junge Rheinland. Flechtheim was a visionary collector and seller whose inventory included works by a myriad of French avant-garde and Expressionist artists of Germany and Austria. Flechtheim was forced to close his “Gallery for Older and Modern Art” in 1917 and sold off over 250 pictures by the likes of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, André Derain and countless other important artists. After serving as a lieutenant in the Westphalian Uhlan Regiment, Flechtheim reopened his gallery in Düsseldorf in 1919. That very year he exhibited Eberhard Viegener’s first solo exhibition, launching his success. He continued to sell the artist’s prints and graphic portfolios until their professional relationship dissolved in 1921. Despite later being labeled a Degenerate Artist in 1938, Viegener was able to continue exhibiting his work and earned the Karl-Ernst Osthaus Prize from the city of Hagen in 1947.

Aligning with many German artists after the devastation of World War I, Viegener drastically shifted from an Expressionistic style to that of the New Objectivity, or Neue Sachlichkeit. He became known for painting cool, architectural still life subjects, utilizing a neutral palette to create stoic arrangements of everyday objects. In the current painting the vessels take on a heavy physical presence. The artist has arranged the ceramic objects within a strange, angular setting, imbuing them with monumentality. The intense elongated shadows and the emptiness behind the arranged subjects create a sense of artificial stillness, removing the still life from the context of reality. Additionally, the ambiguous light source and muted tonalities of the painting also recall the metaphysical surrealist landscapes of Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978).