Lot number 2500 - Auction 150
OHNE TITEL (FUTURISTISCHE KOMPOSITION) (1916)

JOHANNES MOLZAHN 1892 Duisburg - 1965 Munich UNTITLED (FUTURISTIC COMPOSITION) (1916) Pencil and watercolour on paper. 44 x 30.5 cm, frame 74 x 60.5 cm. Signed and dated in pencil lower left. Verso: signed, dated and inscribed on former frame backing, mounted as fragment on new frame backing. Rest., paper with centrefold, corners with pinholes. Mounted in passepartout and framed behind glass (unopened). Provenance: Ostermann-Droste estate, architect Münster; most recently Rhenish private collection. This work by Johannes Molzahn, created in 1916, is a rare and particularly early example of his artistic expression, which already anticipates many of the creative tendencies that were to characterise his later work. In a composition of remarkable colour intensity and rhythmic density, Molzahn unfolds a dynamic structure of geometric forms: Spheres, circles, semicircles and cylinders seem to rotate in a multi-layered space. The movement of these elements is realised in a painterly manner typical of Futurism and evokes a permeated, technical view of the world, which nevertheless does not remain without a transcendent dimension. The finely nuanced watercolour captivates with its vibrant colour palette: rich red and blue tones dominate, interspersed with flowing transitions into yellow and partial shades of green. This visual vibrancy points to Molzahn's special feeling for colour-rhythmic tensions and his proximity to the expressive-abstract formal vocabulary of his contemporaries. Although created before his involvement in the founding of the Bauhaus, the striving for creative renewal and transcendent order is already palpable - an artistic attitude that Molzahn would later formulate in his 'Manifesto of Absolute Expressionism'. In 1916, Molzahn, who was born in 1892 in Duisburg, a city characterised by Rhenish industry, was still influenced by the Swiss circle of artists around Otto Meyer-Amden, with whom he had a close artistic relationship during his stay in Switzerland. His first solo exhibition was organised by the artist Karl Peter Röhl in Weimar in 1914 - an early sign of Molzahn's growing importance in the reform-oriented art scene. The stylistic proximity to Italian Futurism and its concept of a dynamised pictorial surface is unmistakable in the present work, but Molzahn combines these impulses with a structural composition that already points to his later turn towards an organic-geometric pictorial language. The work presented here was created during a phase of intensive artistic development, which was accompanied by early exhibitions with Herwarth Walden in the Berlin gallery 'Der Sturm'. Shortly afterwards, in the context of the progressive Berlin art scene, Molzahn joined the November Group, an association of artists and architects who wanted to actively translate the social and aesthetic ideals of the 1918 revolution into art. Molzahn's position between abstraction and figuration, between technical coolness and metaphysical depth, becomes visible in this work with rare clarity. It documents not only a moment of personal artistic search, but also a time of awakening in the German avant-garde, which Molzahn joined with visionary vigour and intellectual precision. He also benefited from his close connections to artists of the later Bauhaus movement, including Johannes Itten, Willi Baumeister and Oskar Schlemmer, with whom he shared a productive friendship and a common understanding of reform. The sheet is not only highly relevant in terms of art history, but is also a rare piece of evidence within Molzahn's oeuvre due to the period in which it was created, which only very rarely appears on the art market.