Abstraction (the Blue Mountain)

The blue mountain from which the picture takes its name dissolves in wedge-like colour fields, merging with the heavens and the adjacent summit in an aspiring movement that conveys both a sense of monumentality and the dissolution of the structure into crystals. Rohlfs accords the painterly process and thus the surface and colours more importance than the three-dimensional representation of the subject matter, and the piece can thus be construed as a pioneering guide into true abstraction. Rohlfs systematically studied artistic Modernism, (post-) Impressionist, Expressionist and abstract currents. He lived in Munich in 1910-2, where he was in contact with representatives of the Blauer Reiter and concerned himself with transposing the shape of mountains into flat sections of pure colour in a comparatively radical way. In 1911 he asserted in line with this rejection of the subject matter: “I do not paint according to nature.” As a member of the Düsseldorf Sonderbund (Special League) from 1909 onwards he was one of the protagonists of Modern Art in the Rhineland. (Kathrin DuBois)