The intense centre of the picture unravels on to a bright ground over the rest of the canvas: the gaze is drawn to a glowing, yellow core. This is Emil Schumacher’s experimental approach to the materiality of colour. He allows its fundamental manifestations to come together dynamically: multi-layered, impasto application of paint collides with a contoured surface into which he has carved signs and lines. The work Taras Bulba from 1957 marks a high point in the artist’s early informal phase. The title refers to a story by the Russian-language writer Nikolai Gogol.
Emil Schumacher (1912–1999)
Taras Bulba, 1957
Currently exhibited: No
Material: Oil on canvas
Size: 147 x 120 cm
Inv-Nr.: B_021
Image rights: VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
Keywords:
Previous owner: Private collection, Hanover; Sammlung Kraft Bretschneider, Hamburg; Sammlung Stiftung Kunst und Recht, Tübingen; Ketterer Kunst, Munich, 2008
Acquisition: Reinhard Ernst Collection, Grisebach, Berlin, 2009
Solo exhibitions:
2013
‘”Farben sind Feste für die Augen”. Emil Schumacher zum 100. Geburtstag’, Ernst Barlach Haus – Stiftung Hermann F. Reemtsma, Hamburg
2003
‘Emil Schumacher – Bilder der 50er bis 90er Jahre aus der Sammlung Kraft Bretschneider’, Villa Wessel, Iserlohn
1998
‘Emil Schumacher und das Materialbild’, Chapel Art Center, Hamburg; Galerie von Braunbehrens, Munich
1962
Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover; Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster; Kunstverein Freiburg, Freiburg im Breisgau; Städtisches Museum Duisburg, Duisburg; Kunstverein in Hamburg, Hamburg
Group exhibition:
1999
‘Brennpunkt Informel. Quellen – Strömungen – Reaktionen’, Kurpfälzisches Museum der Stadt Heidelberg, Heidelberg; Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg
The intense centre of the picture unravels on to a bright ground over the rest of the canvas: the gaze is drawn to a glowing, yellow core. This is Emil Schumacher’s experimental approach to the materiality of colour. He allows its fundamental manifestations to come together dynamically: multi-layered, impasto application of paint collides with a contoured surface into which he has carved signs and lines. The work Taras Bulba from 1957 marks a high point in the artist’s early informal phase. The title refers to a story by the Russian-language writer Nikolai Gogol.
By 1950, Schumacher had turned away from representational painting. As he explained in a letter to a friend in 1956: ‘And if I were to paint a rose (like this), a sweet and beguilingly fragrant one, yes my dear, mine would smell of nothing but linseed oil and turpentine. So I leave it looking pretty and instead I paint pictures, which I get from the landscape of my impressions – and yours.’ [1]
In founding the group junger westen in 1947, Schumacher helped pave the way for the development of informal painting. He also contributed to a number of groundbreaking exhibitions such as ‘Eine neue Richtung in der Malerei‘ (A New Direction in Painting) in the Kunsthalle Mannheim from 1957 to 1958. Schumacher achieved international recognition through his participation in the first exhibitions of German post-war art in Amsterdam and Paris, as well as in the documenta in 1959 and 1964.
[1] Letter from Emil Schumacher to a friend, December 1956, private collection, reprinted in: Christoph Zuschlag, ‘Undeutbar – und doch bedeutsam. Reflections on Informal Painting,’ in: Brennpunkt Informel: Sources, Currents, Reactions, ed. by Christoph Zuschlag, Hans Gerke, and Annette Frese, ex. cat. Kurpfälzisches Museum der Stadt Heidelberg, Cologne 1998, pp. 38–45, here p. 38.
