Lot number 2353 - Auction 150
GRABLEGUNG, 1924

LOUIS SEEL Wiesbaden 1881 - 1958 ENTOMBMENT, 1924 Oil on canvas. 74 × 61 cm (f. 86 × 74 cm). Signed and dated lower right. Framed. This work by Louis Seel, created in 1924 during his stay in France, is a striking example of the engagement with religious themes in interwar art. After the end of the First World War, Seel briefly returned to Paris in 1919, only to find that none of the works he had left there had survived. He subsequently moved to southern France, living in various places including Villeneuve-lès-Avignon and later settling in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, where he remained for two decades. Seel's paintings from this period are characterized by a subdued color palette and simplified, partly abstracted forms. His choice of the religious subject "Entombment of Christ" reflects the artistic discourse of the 1920s, in which traditional iconographies were reinterpreted in a new, postmodern light in the aftermath of the First World War.