Hanns Bolz
(Aachen 1885 - 1918 Munich)
At the Variety Show (around 1910/1912)
Oil tempera on canvas
25,5 x 32,5 cm
41 x 48 cm framed
Provenance: From the artist's estate
A wonderful piece from the small but outstanding body of work by the rediscovered Rhenish expressionist Hanns Bolz. His paintings were exhibited at the leading avant-garde galleries of Alfred Flechtheim in Düsseldorf and Hans Goltz in Munich as well as represented at Herwarth Walden's legendary "First German Autumn Salon" (1913) in Berlin. Since the artist, who died early, destroyed some of his works himself before his death as well as ordered the destruction of more pieces in his will, only a few artworks have survived,
The present work is committed to cubism. The artist describes a scene in a variety show where elegantly dressed men are having a fun time with beautiful, sometimes only scantily clad women. Concentrating on angles and geometric shapes, an excitingly composed visual world is constructed. Another characteristic that Bolz borrows from Cubist art is the reduction of color, which the painter takes to the extreme by exclusively choosing black, white and shades of gray. Bolz achieves a spectacular visual effect by placing the angularly outlined figures in front of the geometric background, causing them to appear floating.
