Arnold Topp Lot n° 137

Arnold Topp Mallows 1923 Reverse glass painting with semi-opaque and opaque paints and backed tin foil. 25.1 x 19.1 cm. In original frame (33.1 x 26 cm). Unmarked. - Overall good condition. Enders 23.ed.2. With a confirmation from Ulrike Probst, the daughter of the first owner Wilhelm Wulff, Soest, dated 16.10.2013. The reverse glass painting was part of the Volkswagen Foundation's research project "Hinterglasmalerei als Technik der Klassischen Moderne 1905-1955", Museum Penzberg - Sammlung Campendonk, Penzberg, 2017/18. Provenance Galerie Der Sturm, Berlin 1923 (with label on the reverse); Wilhelm Wulff, Soest (gift from the artist), Wilhelm Wulff estate (1980); privately owned, North Rhine-Westphalia; Lempertz Cologne, auction 882, 3.12.2005, lot 999; private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia Exhibitions Berlin 1923 (Galerie Der Sturm), one hundred and twenty-third exhibition. Arnold Topp, Wilhelm Wulff, The Young Danes. Sturm-Gesamtschau, cat. No. 25; Recklinghausen 1951 (Kunsthalle), Westfälische Kunst der letzten 50 Jahre, with illus.; Penzberg 2017 (Museum Sammlung Campendonk). Deep light. Malerei hinter Glas von August Macke bis Gerhard Richter, 2017, color illus. p. 17; Soest 2021 (Museum Wilhelm Morgner), Vom Expressionismus zur Neuen Sachlichkeit - Wilhelm Morgner und die Soester Kunstavantgarde (1918-1934), Cat. No. VII.06, with color illus. Arnold Topp, born in Soest in 1887 and living mainly in Brandenburg from 1913, made contact with the well-known Berlin gallery "Der Sturm" and its founder Herwarth Walden at an early age. Right at the beginning of his artistic career, Walden included him in the ranks of 'his' artists and mentioned him in the same breath as Wassily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, Kurt Schwitters and Franz Marc. Topp greatly admired Walden and was aware that his artistic success would depend on him, the champion of Expressionism. Walden took on an almost paternal role for the aspiring artist and knew that he had a diamond to cut. During the war, Walden kept in touch and sent him the magazine "Der Sturm" to the front (see Rainer Enders, Arnold Topp. Ein Lebensbild, Weimar 2007, p. 37). Topp's artistic oeuvre encompassed a wide range of techniques - he worked in both oil and watercolor, mastered all common graphic techniques and, from 1916, also created reverse glass paintings. The present work, owned by Topp's sculptor friend Wilhelm Wulff, is one of the few surviving reverse glass paintings. With dark blue, green, orange and yellow areas of color that have developed an attractive pattern due to the corroding tin, the glass painting "Malven" is one of Topp's earliest, purely abstract works. It was exhibited at the "Der Sturm" gallery in 1923, the year it was created, and thus has an excellent provenance. As a large part of his entire oeuvre, especially the reverse glass paintings, was destroyed by the artist's early death in 1945, the work "Malven" is of particular significance.