ALFRED MEYER-BERNBURG (1872-?) Berlin & Munich, Germany
Bacchus 1924
Oil on board
Signed: Alfred Meyer-Bernburg MCNN 1924 (lower right on the canvas)
Image: H: 16” x W: 11”
Framed: H: 23 1/4” x W: 18 3/8”
Price: $39,000
Alfred Meyer-Bernburg was born in Bernburg, Germany on July 27th, 1872. He studied at the Akademie in Berlin from 1891-92 and later at the Akademie der Bildenden Kuenste in Munich from 1897-1904. Meyer-Bernburg was a member of the Münchner Künstlergruppe (MKG).
ROGER GEORGES ANDRÈ DUVAL (1901-?) Meudon (Seine-et-Oise), France
La Chambré 1924
Oil on canvas
Signed and dated: ROGER DUVAL XXIV(lower left)
Exhbited: Paris, Salon des Indépendants, 1926, no. 1122
For more information see: Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs, Vol. 4, E. Bénézit (Paris: Librairie Gründ, 1976).
Painting: H: 23 2/3” x W: 36 1/5”
Framed: H: 35” x 47 5/8”
Roger Duval painted in a modernist figurative style and beginning in 1920 regularly exhibited at the Salon d’Automne and the Salon des Indépendants in Paris. In 1925 he was awarded a prize by Paul Poiret for a painting entitled Conversation and again in 1926 for another painting entitled Bal Musette. Also in 1926, La Chambrée (1924) was exhibited in Paris at the Salon des Indépendants. By 1928 Duval’s technique had evolved into a moderninst/cubist style and a group of his paintings were featured in an Exposition of Painting and Sculpture in Boston, MA.
It is interesting to note Duval’s shared vision with Picasso in their depiction of peasant figures in repose. Their full-bodied, voluptuous and sensual forms illustrate both artists’ sculptural approach to painting in the early 1920s. However by the mid-1920s Duval and Picasso’s painting styles evolved from these softer, rounded shapes into more angular, abstracted forms.
CHRISTIAN DELL (1893-1974) Germany
BAUHAUS (1919-1933) Germany
“Tee-Ei” (tea ball) 1924 (rare set of 8)
Silvered brass.
***These are all in fine original, untouched condition.
Illustrated: Christian Dell: Silberschmied und Leuchtengestalter im 20. Jahrhundert, Beate Alice Hofmann, Museum Hanau (Hanau: Heller Druck,1996) illus. 15, p.56; Modernist Design 1880-1940, Alastair Duncan, The Norwest Collection (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Antique Collectors’ Club, 1998), p. 173; Decorative Arts 1850-1950, Judy Rudoe, (London: British Museum Press, 1991) cover, p. 276; Die Metall Werkstatt am Bauhaus, (Berlin: Bauhaus-Archiv, Museum für Gestaltung, 1992) pp. 140-141 Silver of a New Era, (Rotterdam: Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, 1992) p. 157; cat. no. 140.
Length: 5 1/4″
Price: $9,600
Christian Dell, metal artist and industrial designer, played a formative role in shaping the Bauhaus style. Dell was the master of the metal workshop at the Bauhaus, 1922-25, in Weimar, working closely with László Moholy-Nagy.
Born the son of a locksmith in Offenbach in 1893, he had a great impact as a teacher on the curriculum of the Weimar metal workshop. He had done an apprenticeship as a silversmith in Hanau before and had also attended the drawing academy, followed by a stay at the Weimar School of Applied Art. Henry van de Velde, director of this institution, coined Christian Dell’s early works with his organic-flowing use of forms, a feature that can also be observed on Dell’s later works.
Metal workshop at the Bauhaus in Weimar:
From 1922, the former goldsmith, silversmith and coppersmith workshops of the Weimar phase became a laboratory for design where metal vessels and lamps were made. This is also where the designs for industry, as well as metal furniture, were ultimately created. In 1922, the silversmith Christian Dell took over as master of works. Following Itten’s departure in 1923, the workshop developed in a new direction with the Hungarian Constructivist László Moholy-Nagy. Instead of individual pieces, prototypes were now made for mass production. In order to manufacture the individual models, a production line was established.