(Liebau 1874–1930 Breslau)
Two female nudes, signed Otto Mueller, gouache, watercolour, coloured chalk on grainy drawing paper, 66.6 x 52.3 cm, framed, (PS)

This work will be included in the supplement to the catalogue raisonné of works by Otto Mueller by Dr Mario-Andreas von Lüttichau.

Provenance:
Private Collection, Rhineland

Otto Mueller’s use of colour, his conception of the figure and his style of painting are strikingly different from those of his artist colleagues in Die Brücke. He worked closely with them from 1910 to 1913. They remained tied by friendship even after the group dissolved. Mueller’s themes are not worldly, they do not critique society and they are not urban in motif. His techniques and his subject matter is reduced in nature, and he remained true in his images to a harmonious, peaceful depiction of the relationship between man and nature. “His artistic motivation lies less in the description or critique of the status quo and more in a seeking after the self, after what it is to be human and, centrally, the nature of man and woman.” (p.67) In its evident reductive style and isolated setting, Two female nudes illustrates Mueller’s desire to depict primeval images of man, above all, of the female body. The female bodies, reduced to simple forms with contours drawn in blue lines, are depicted by Otto Mueller with consummate grace and charm. The younger woman to the left turns in an intimate gesture to the older woman on the right. Otto Mueller manages to capture the intimacy, the gestures and the trust between the women in broad brushstrokes in delicate tones using chalky colours.
(Mario Andreas von Lüttichau, ‘Von Liebespaaren, Doppelporträts und anderen Figurenbildern – Otto Muellers Bilderwelt’, in: exh. cat., Otto Mueller. Eine Retrospektive, Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, 21 March – 22 June 2003, Munich 2003, p. 67 ff)

“My main goal is to express my sense of landscape and people with the greatest simplicity.” Otto Mueller in: catalogue, Paul Cassirer 1919