Edmund Steppes (Burghausen 1873-1968 Ulrichsberg)

"The Spooky Tree (Weathered Tree on a Rocky Slope), also known as "Gespenstisches Astgewirr" ("Spooky Tangled Branch")

1922

watercolor over gray ink with traces of white heightening on handmade paper

16,2 x 22,7 cm 

signed and dated lower left "Edm. St. 1922"

Provenance:

Estate of the Artist

H. W. Fichter Kunsthandel, Frankfurt am Main

Galerie Bassenge, Berlin

Publication History:

Natursehnsucht und Phantasiewahrheit: Zeichnungen und Aquarelle von Edmund Steppes (Frankfurt am Main: H. W. Fichter Kunsthandel, 2017), page 10 (ill.) and cat. nr. 32 (ill.).

"The present drawing belongs to a complex of Steppes' work that emerged in the years 1917 to 1922. ... In these pictures, Steppes deals with the transformation and inexorable formation processes of nature as a law of life. Thus, the gnarled old trees bear a human-like appearance, the roots become a nervous spur, plant parts become bizarre insects. In aesthetic transformation, Steppes' landscape does not serve as a bucolic-idyllic or realistic counterpoint to the alienated city, but as an impressive, lonely, peculiar extreme region."  GB