Lot 44 D

Like so many avant-garde artists, the painter Hans Purrmann felt the effects of the Nazi regime early on. However, he had the good fortune to be able to leave Germany in 1935 to become the voluntary head of the Deutscher Künstlerbund’s “Villa Romana” foundation and spend the following years in Florence. Purrmann would ultimately live and work in this city of the Renaissance for eight formative years – secure in the magnificent country villa in the Via Senese and surrounded by befriended artists like Gerhard Marcks, Emy Roeder and Rudolf Levy. This period was defined by optimism and melancholy, losses and triumphs, but – above all – by his many boldly colourful paintings filled with light. The location alone of his new home in the south of Florence on a hill beyond the Porta Romana made it exceptional. Purrmann repeatedly painted the view of the splendid city and park-like gardens as seen from his privileged dwelling.
His landscapes took on a previously unknown intensity of colour and sense of depth there. In the magnificent painting “Garten der Villa Romana” from 1941, he has focused his gaze on the park’s majestic broadleaved tree, which is flanked by conifers to its left and the villa built in 1904/1905 to its right. Beginning with the light foreground of the lawn, he has built up the composition in varied shades of green, which finally come up against the narrow blue passage of the sky. The landscape is immersed in the radiant light of a summer day – the leaves, the oleander shrub in the front garden and, not least, the terracotta-coloured façade of the villa seem to reflect the rays of the sun. Applying the paint thinly at some points and in an impasto at others, Purrmann composed a peaceful, Mediterranean park landscape – in the middle of the Second World War.
This painting is from the estate of Elisabeth Heintz (1911-1966): she was Purrmann’s secretary and close confidante for many years during his Ticino period, and he bequeathed her a number of works.