Mädchen im Raum. Um 1947/48.
Watercolor ove pencil.
Inscribed "bestätigt: Siddi M. Heckel" and titled by Siddi Heckel on the reverse. On creme Elepa wove paper (with truncated watermark). 29.5 x 25.5 cm (11.6 x 10 in), the full sheet.
The work was presumably made around 1947/48. In 1947, Heckel also created a lithograph with the same motif (Ebner/Gabelmann 907 L). The depiction goes back to a concept from 1910, executed in the last Dresden studio on the “Falkenbrücke”, with the newly designed frieze (documented in historical photographs) in the background. At that time, just as in 1947/48, the female nude could relate to Heckel's girlfriend and later wife Siddi Riha, whom Heckel met in late 1910. [CH].

• The watercolor captures the artist's personal world: his wife, his studio apartment and his carvings.
• Heckel's depicted wooden sculpture of a nude arranging her hair is shown in several of his works and in a photograph, it was probably created in Dresden around 1908/09 (not preserved, see Hüneke, vol. I, p. 373, ill. no. 12w).
• In this work, the artist refers to a motif from the Dresden "Brücke" years, which he subsequently used in, among others, a print.

The work is registered in the estate of Erich Heckel, Hemmenhofen on Lake Constance. We are grateful to Mrs. Renate Ebner and Mr. Hans Geissler for their kind support in cataloging this lot.

PROVENANCE: Erich Heckel Estate, Hemmenhofen (until 1978, with the estate stamp on the reverse).
Private collection Northern Germany (since at leat 1994).

EXHIBITION: Erich Heckel. Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, kleine Formate, Vorstudien, Notizen, Galerie Rosenbach, Hanover 1978, cat. no. 101.

Elaborate watercolor in good condition. The sheet is very minimally tanned, the colors somewhat faded. Isolated tiny brown spots. The sheet edges slightly irregular. Vertical crease in the left half of the sheet. Isolated handling marks. In the upper two corners of the sheet, as well as in the left margin of the image, with pinpoint areas of paper thinning, there with slight color irregularities on recto.
For information concerning the condition, please view the high resolution image / backside image.