Emil Schumacher
1912 - 1999
Xerxes. 1960.
Oil and sand on canvas.
Signed and dated lower right. 100 x 80 cm (39.3 x 31.4 in). [JS].

• Strong, early composition from Schumacher's first informal work phase.
• Perfect symbiosis of title and composition: the physiognomy of the Persian ruler and Egyptian pharaoh "Xerxes" has been handed down in stone reliefs.
• In the 1950s, Schumacher began to increase the haptic presence of the paint by adding sand, creating a color landscape in "Xerxes" that recalls archaic rock formations.
• Exhibited in 1961 at the Kootz Gallery, New York, and since then part of an American private collection.

The work is registered in the Emil Schumacher Archive, Emil Schumacher Museum, Hagen. We are grateful to Mr. Rouven Lotz for his kind expert advice.

PROVENANCE: Kootz Gallery, New York (from the artist in 1961).
Catherine Epstein Collection, New York (acquired from the above - 2016).
Catherine Epstein Estate, New York (since 2016).

EXHIBITION: 16 american and european artists, Samuel M. Kootz Gallery, New York (with the gallery label on the stretcher).

Karl Ruhrberg, Emil Schumacher. Zeichen und Farbe, Cologne 1987, p. 27.

Schumacher's oeuvre faced a radical change in 1950 when he abandoned the object as a pictorial motif and finally, around 1955, decided in favor of the pure expressive power of painting. From then on, color, line and materiality dominated his work. This stylistic change took place against the background of a contemporary style influenced by the French École de Paris, Tachism and American Action Painting. Schumacher added sand to the paint, in order to achieve the greatest possible plasticity. The impasto painting medium eliminates the dualism of ground and painterly form and pushes the compositional structure into the background in favor of a lively color landscape. Schumacher spread out a relief reminiscent of encrusted layers of clay, thus generating a unique pictorial language with a powerful expression supported by its haptic presence. The press release of the MKM Museum Küppersmühle, Duisburg, on the occasion of the large solo exhibition "Emil Schumacher - Inspiration und Widerstand” (Inspiration and Resistance, November 15, 2018 to March 10, 2019) reads: "Contemporary art is inconceivable without him. Emil Schumacher (1912-1999) is one of the most important protagonists of German postwar abstraction, who dared a radical new beginning in art after World War II and confronted the past with new pictorial inventions.” Schumacher liberated color from form and line from motif, and through this radically emancipatory act, he achieved a dissociation of painting and surface. This highly dynamic composition is a wonderfully early example of Schumacher's artistically groundbreaking decision to delimit painting by exploring the third dimension. With the aim of enhancing the relief-like effect of his paintings, Schumacher incorporated other non-art materials such as stones, lead, asphalt, and sisal into his later compositions. [JS]

In an exceptionally good condition, with only a tiny loss of color in the upper edge in left. The condition report was compiled in daylight and with the help of an ultraviolet light andto the best of our knowledge and belief.
For information concerning the condition, please view the high resolution image / backside image.