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painting of a blue vase with flowers and fruit on a tablepainting of a blue vase with flowers and fruit on a tablea painting of a wooden frame with writing on it
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711 - Bruno Krauskopf*
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Estimate €1,800 - €2,600
Sale commission
Description
Bruno Krauskopf* (Malbork 1892 – 1960 Berlin) Flowers and fruits oil on cardboard 50 x 42 cm ESTIMATE € 1,800 – € 2,600 STARTING PRICE € 1,800 Bruno Krauskopf began an apprenticeship as a chromolithographer in Berlin at the age of fourteen, before studying painting under Emil Doepler at the Royal Museum of Decorative Arts from 1910 to 1915. Whilst still a student, he exhibited for the first time in 1912 at the Casper Gallery in Berlin and soon afterwards joined a studio partnership with Wilhelm Kohlhoff and Harry Deierling, where he produced an extensive body of graphic work comprising lithographs, woodcuts and linocuts. Krauskopf became a member of the Free Secession at an early stage and, at the instigation of Lovis Corinth, joined the Berlin Secession in 1916, where he played a central role as a board member, jury member and vice-president until 1933. At the same time, in 1918, he became involved in the radical-democratic November Group alongside Max Pechstein, Rudolf Belling and Erich Mendelsohn. His painting evolved from an initially subdued colour palette, influenced by Impressionism and Expressive Realism, to a powerful, simplified formal language characterised by figures with emphasised contours, compact forms and increasingly intense colour. In the 1920s, Krauskopf undertook study trips to France and Poland, which deepened his engagement with European Modernism and led to a condensation of compositions in which landscape, figure and architecture are transformed into dynamic, sometimes almost Constructivist, pictorial structures. His paintings attracted considerable attention in the Weimar Republic; exhibitions in Berlin (including at the Flechtheim Gallery), in Norwegian museums, and his active participation in Secession exhibitions established him as a recognised representative of New Objectivity–Expressionist painting of the interwar period. With the rise of the National Socialists to power, his work was denounced as ‘degenerate’. In 1933, under duress, Krauskopf emigrated to Norway and settled in Stavanger, where he quickly became involved in the local art scene alongside artists such as Edvard Munch, Per Krohg and Henrik Sørensen. He increasingly exhibited works in Norwegian museums and art societies; these works, characterised by Nordic landscapes, rugged coastlines and tranquil interiors, combined the expressive intensity of his Berlin years with a cooler, often melancholic colour palette. After the Second World War, he was declared persona non grata in Norway as a German émigré; in 1948, he was forced to leave the country, his property was confiscated by the Norwegian state, and Krauskopf emigrated to the USA, where, with the support of George Grosz, he established contacts within the New York art scene and took part in exhibitions. In 1957, Krauskopf returned to Berlin, closed his New York studio in 1959, and spent his final years in West Berlin, where he died in 1960. Today he is regarded as a representative of the so-called ‘Lost Generation’, whose lives, interrupted by persecution and exile, were only belatedly recognised in art history. Other artists and styles: Wilhelm Kohlhoff, Harry Deierling, Lovis Corinth, Max Pechstein, Georg Tappert, Rudolf Belling, Erich Mendelsohn, Max Liebermann, George Grosz, Edvard Munch, Per Krohg, Henrik Sørensen, Emil Doepler, Hans von Marées, Paul Cézanne, Albert Weisgerber, Max Beckmann, Oskar Moll, Hans Purrmann; Free Berlin Secession, Berlin Secession, November Group, Workers’ Council for Art, Lost Generation, Expressionism, Impressionism, New Objectivity, New Objectivity PLEASE NOTE: The purchase price comprises the highest bid plus the buyer’s premium, VAT and, where applicable, the artists’ resale rights fee and platform fee. In the case of standard taxation (marked °), a premium of 24% is added to the highest bid. The statutory sales tax of 13 per cent (20 per cent for photographs) is added to the sum of the highest bid, the buyer’s premium and the platform fee. The buyer’s premium amounts to 28 per cent in the case of differential taxation. The sales tax is included in the differential taxation.
See original version (German)
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About the sale Modern Art
Auction location
Auction time 09/30/2026 at 10:00 AM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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