021   Herbert Behrens-Hangeler "Inferno". 1927. 1927.

Herbert Behrens-Hangeler 1898 Berlin – 1981 Fredersdorf

Oil on canvas. Monogrammed "hbh" lower left. To the reverse dated in brush, signed "HANGELER" and titled. On the upper ...
stretcher bar again monogrammed "hbh" in brush, inscribed in lead "Herb. Hangeler" and with several inscriptions painted over by the artist's hand. In a wide plate frame.
Exhibited in: Hangeler. Berlin, Galerie Franz, 1948, cat. no. 8.Hangeler, November Group. Buckow-Herder-Voigt Collection. Berlin. Neukölln Art Office, City Hall Gallery, 1977. cat.-no. 20.November Group. Berlin, Galerie Bodo Niemann, 1993/94, cat.-no. 14, with full-page colour illustration, p. 70.Cf. also the painting "Hemingway", oil on canvas, 174.9 x 75 cm, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Galerie Neue Meister, Inv.-Nr. 82/03, painted in the same year

.In 1921 Herbert Behrens-Hangeler joined the Berlin Novembergruppe and remained a member until its dissolution in 1933. The artists of the association around César Klein and Max Pechstein saw themselves as radical revolutionaries. A uniform style was neither cultivated nor aspired to, but rather the currents of Futurism, Expressionism and Cubism mixed within the group. In addition, there were the ideas of the Bauhaus and the DADA movement. Like other artists of the November Group, Behrens-Hangeler experimented with the medium of film and its abstraction in the 1920s. The focus was always on the search for a new dynamic. The context was Berlin in the Roaring Twenties, a multifaceted time marked by change. All these influences can be found in the painting above. It is already the title "Inferno" that implies chaos and the complete absence of order. The collage-like superimposition of different colours and structures combines in front of the viewer's eye to form a moving and multi-layered overall picture that is exemplary of Behrens-Hangler's works of these years and his work within the Novembergruppe. > Read more

Canvas with two expertly closed tears (middle right, appr. 1,5 x 2 cm as well as upper left, appr. 1 cm). A tiny closed hole lower left. There to the reverse with a small retouch. Paint very occasionally with inconspicuous craquelure. To the left side and bottom side with a nailed-on spacing strip.

90 x 85 cm, Ra. 110 x 105 cm.