Pencil on paper
31cm x 24cm
Monogrammed bottom right
There is a profound depth of humanity and pathos in this drawing - it captures a moment of deep introspection. It is perhaps a prophet, Marquardt’s subject in other works, or maybe just an everyday man, this discrepancy however is illustrative of the universality of the human condition, which is the real subject of this piece. The soft sensation created by the multiple small marks marries perfectly with the subtlety and tenderness of the man’s gaze. The geometric abstraction, reminiscent of Heckel, Kirchner and Marc, is not formulaic and is instead personal and intimate.
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Hedwig Marquardt studied under Professor Engels, at an academy in Munich in 1906–09. She exhibited in the Juryfreie Kunstschau in Berlin in 1911 and 1913 and the Magdeburg Kunstschau of 1912. The First World War halted the progress and momentum of German expressionism. Following the war In 1922 she met the sculptor and ceramic artist Augusta Kaiser, who called herself Gust Kaiser from 1922. Marquardt was a member of the Confessing Church, a movement within German Protestantism during Nazi Germany that arose in opposition to government-sponsored efforts to unify all Protestant churches into a single pro-Nazi German Evangelical Church. This was probably the main reason she left Germany in the 1930s and came in England. Examples of Marquardt’s work are in the collections of the British Museum, London, and the Leicester City Gallery. The Stadtmuseum Kiel and the Keramik-Museum Berlin hold ceramic pieces.
