Lot number 2501 - Auction 150
'BADENDE KNABEN' (1920)

OTTO RODEWALD 1891 Schöningen - 1960 Hamburg 'BATHING BOYS' (1920) Oil on canvas. 100 x 100 cm, frame 111.5 x 111.5 cm. Signed and dated "Rodewald (19)20" centre right. Verso: signed verso, with artist's address and residue of an old adhesive label. Part. sporadically min. rest. Frame; original artist's frame enclosed. Provenance: From the estate of Charlotte Thiede, the artist's wife; then family property; most recently Rhenish private collection. Literature: - Heydorn, Volker Detlef, 'Alexander Friedrich. Otto Rodewald. Heinrich Stegemann', in: Berufsverband bildender Künstler Hamburgs, e.V. (ed.), "Geschichte der Hamburger Kunst", vol. 6, Hamburg 1970, with illustrations, no pp; - Heydorn, Volker Detlef, "Maler in Hamburg 1886-1945", Hans Christians Verlag, Hamburg 1974, cover and colour illus. p. 96; - "Der Neue Rump: Lexikon der bildenden Künstler Hamburgs", 2013, p. 374; - M. Bruhns, "Kunst in der Krise", vol. 2, 2001, p. 331, here each with the date 1919; - 'art. Das Kunstmagazin', 05.2023, with colour illustration, p. 155. The painting Bathing Boys, created around 1920, is one of Otto Rodewald's early major works and marks a decisive phase in his artistic oeuvre. In a carefully balanced composition, Rodewald combines the depiction of several youthful figures with a landscape characterised by light and movement. The scene does not show a naturalistic snapshot, but a stylised, almost timeless world in which body, water and nature merge into a harmonious unity. Rodewald was born in 1891 in Schöningen, a small town on the edge of extensive beech forests. His affinity for nature and drawing was evident from an early age and is reflected in numerous childhood memories. The landscape character and a pantheistic view of nature permeate his entire oeuvre and are also expressed in Bathing Boys. Works that predate this painting - both prints and paintings - combine the abstract symbolism of a Franz Marc with lyrically softened futurism and decorative elements. These works hint at a fairy-tale element that is stylistically reminiscent of Marc's Messages to Prince Jussuf - with segments of circles and diagonals interspersed with lines. The colour scheme is also symbolically charged and looks as if it is emerging from a dream world. After his training at the Hamburg Landeskunstschule under Carl Otto Czeschka - a key representative of Viennese Art Nouveau - Rodewald developed a clear formal language that combines decorative elements, two-dimensional composition and symbolic pictorial structure. These influences are also present in Bathing Boys: the bodies of the bathers are placed in the centre of the square picture plane like mythical creatures. The dynamic modelling of the youths is embedded in the surrounding vegetation. In terms of colour, green and red tones dominate this expressive, crystalline composition. The high-contrast yellow as a source of light appears to be laid over the water and the body in flowing transitions and accentuates the jump into the water of the central figure. The numerous, bubble-like stylised splashes of water, in which the light is refracted, emphasise the dynamism of the moment. The painting was created in the immediate post-war period. Rodewald had taken part in the First World War as a member of an assault battalion, was severely wounded several times and suffered from the health consequences for the rest of his life. From then on, he saw his artistic work as a form of inner processing and stabilisation. In a letter, he described his painting as an attempt to build 'walls of colour and form' against the experiences of war. Bathing Boys is exemplary of this new artistic beginning - it refers to a counter-world to biographical reality and formulates an idealised idea of integrity and carefreeness. From 1921, Rodewald succeeded in entering the Hamburg art scene. He took part in exhibitions organised by the Hamburg Secession, found an important patron in Gustav Pauli, the director of the Kunsthalle at the time, and was introduced to the banker and collector Paul Michael Mendel through his mediation. Mendel not only became the buyer of several works, but also enabled Rodewald to undergo medical rehabilitation at the Davos lung sanatorium - a circumstance that was of great importance for his further artistic development. Bathing Boys thus marks a transition: from a traumatised war veteran to a searching artist who finds new forms of expression in the exaggeration of everyday scenes. The work stands at the beginning of an artistic reorientation in which late impressionist, art nouveau and early magical realist elements are combined. It is one of the paintings that situate Rodewald's work between the symbolist tradition and the modernism of the Weimar Republic. Today, Bathing Boys is considered one of the central early works in the artist's oeuvre. It not only documents a stylistic development, but also refers to the close interweaving of biography, contemporary history and visual language in Rodewald's oeuvre. The composition impresses with its painterly precision, atmospheric density and subtle combination of form, content and emotion.