Lot number 109 - Auction 140
'BERLIN, CHARLOTTENBURG STADT- UND FERNBAHNGLEISE IM SCHNEE (BLICK VON UNSERER WOHNUNG)' (1935)

CONRAD FELIXMÜLLER
1897 Dresden - 1977 Berlin

'BERLIN, CHARLOTTENBURG STADT- UND FERNBAHNGLEISE IM SCHNEE (BLICK VON UNSERER WOHNUNG)' (1935)

Oil on canvas. 58 x 67 cm (f. 71 x 80 cm). Signed lower left 'C. Felixmüller' and dated and inscribed 'Berlin Dez(ember) (19)35'. Verso: signed, inscribed 'WV-Nr 660-1935' and 'Berlin-Charlbg S=Fernbahngleise' on the reverse of the canvas and on the frame moulding, with label inscribed. Frame.

Literature: Spielmann 660.

Provenance: Rhenish private collection.

The painting 'Berlin, Charlottenburger Stadt- und Fernbahngeleise im Schnee (Blick von unserer Wohnung)', dated 21 December 1935 and offered on the auction market for the first time, shows Felixmüller's private view from the window of his Berlin flat of the Charlottenburg railway maintenance depot. Felixmüller had already taken up the motif of railway tracks in 1934 in the work 'Häusermeer und Schienenstränge' (cf. Spielmann 602). In contrast to his expressionist works, Felixmüller turned to realistic, contemplative painting from 1925 onwards. It differs markedly from the artist's early work both in its coordinated tonality and in its finer application of colour. Felixmüller's painting harmoniously captures a cold December day in Berlin-Charlottenburg. The white blankets of snow envelop the distant rows of houses in the city and the railway tracks in a winter torpor, broken only by the colour of the passing trains with their lined-up carriages.

Conrad Felixmüller and his wife Londa moved to Berlin on 1 April 1934, leaving Dresden, where they had lived since 1918, first in Klotzsche and then Dresden-Neustadt, to move to Rönnestraße 18 in Berlin-Charlottenburg in the hope of finding freer working opportunities there. It was the consequence of the changing climate in Dresden, which was initially heralded by the removal of a painting by Felixmüller from an exhibition at the Saxon Art Association on the orders of Minister President Walther Schieck in 1931 and continued with the rejection of his application at the end of 1932 for the newly vacant position of master class at the Dresden Academy of Arts by the National Socialist rector Richard Müller. When the National Socialists seized power in 1933, the situation became increasingly tense: in the autumn of 1933, Felixmüller's early Expressionist works were publicly defamed for the first time in the 'Entartete Kunst' exhibition in Dresden's new town hall, and in 1937 all of his works in public collections were removed and also became part of the 'Entartete Kunst' exhibition in Munich. From then on, Felixmüller was considered 'politically compromised' and was also expelled from the board of the Reich Association of Visual Artists. The flat and studio in Berlin-Charlottenburg were finally destroyed by bombing raids in 1944, forcing Conrad and Londa Felixmüller to move to Tautenhain, south of Leipzig. They were not to move back to Berlin until 1961, where Conrad Felixmüller died in Berlin-Zehlendorf on 24 March 1977.