Hölzel, Adolf

Description:

Olmütz, 1853 - Stuttgart, 1934
49 x 60 cm, R.
"Nach Sonnenuntergang, Vorfrühling", 1894. Oil on canvas. Signed in oil lower left. Titled and dated on the reverse of the stretcher.
The authenticity of the work was confirmed by Dr. Alexander Klee, Vienna. We thank Dr. Klee for his scholarly advice.
Dorotheum, Kunstpalais, Vienna, auction "Klassische Moderne und Zeitgenössische Kunst", auction 8 May 1991, lot 15.
Galerie Fischinger, Stuttgart.
Collection Monika and Horst Bülow, Leonberg, acquired there in 1991.
Exhibition:
"Internationale Kunst-Ausstellung des Vereins bildender Künstler Münchens - Secession", München 1894, no 132.
Adolf Hölzel ranks among the leading pioneers of modernism in Germany. Born in 1853 in Olomouc (Moravia), he first studied at the Vienna Academy and, from 1876, at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Already in the 1880s he emerged as a landscape painter who moved away from naturalistic traditions and increasingly concentrated on the effects of colour and light.
The present painting "Nach Sonnenuntergang, Vorfrühling" (After Sunset, Early Spring) from 1884 is a key work from this early phase of his oeuvre. In the depiction of a wide spring landscape carpeted with red poppies, Hölzel reveals his intensive engagement with the possibilities of an impressionistically inspired plein-air painting. The sun has already set; the last rays break through the cloud cover and bathe the scene in a golden-pink light, fusing sky and landscape into a vibrating chord of colour.
Hölzel achieves here a subtle balance between realistic representation of nature and atmospheric condensation. The short, loosely applied brushstrokes in the foreground lend the poppy field a pulsating vitality, while the horizontal orientation of the composition emphasizes the breadth of the landscape. The viewer’s gaze is led across the fields toward a distant tree line and farmsteads - a sign of the artist’s deep-rooted connection to the southern German landscape that inspired him throughout his life.
That the work was presented in 1894 at the "Internationale Kunst-Ausstellung des Vereins bildender Künstler Münchens - Secession" underscores its contemporary importance. The Munich Secession, founded in 1892, stood for the breakthrough to modernism and a departure from academic convention. The inclusion of Hölzel’s painting in this prestigious context recognized his standing as a progressive artist at the forefront of stylistic change.
Hölzel, appointed professor at the Stuttgart Academy in 1905, went on to become an influential teacher who decisively shaped the next generation of artists. His students included Oskar Schlemmer, Willi Baumeister, Johannes Itten, and Ida Kerkovius. To them he imparted a novel theory of colour and form that paved the way to abstraction and significantly influenced the development of classical modernism.
The present painting thus captures Hölzel in a decisive transitional moment, laying the foundation for his later colour theory and his role as mentor to the avant-garde. "Nach Sonnenuntergang, Vorfrühling" combines poetic observation of nature with the germ of a modern pictorial conception, one that moves beyond mere representation and understands colour and light as autonomous vehicles of artistic expression. It is not only an early masterpiece within his oeuvre but also a significant document of the evolution of modern landscape painting in Germany.