Schöpfung II

Schöpfung II, painted in 1916, is one of the major oils realised by Molzahn during the devastating, traumatic years at the front during the Great War. Detached as a 'Landsturmmann' on the Danish border, the artist was deeply inspired by the vast horizons of the Schleswig landscape, but was also utterly shocked by the war - an experience which he tried to overcome through the catharsis of art. The Schöpfung series was ambitious both in scale - these were Molzahn's first large canvases - and conception - the series is a major intellectual project in which Molzahn expresses his pantheistic vision of the universe and Man's place within it. Striving to combine his many sources of creative inspiration, the overt biblical references in Schöpfung I (see fig. 1), are replaced in Schöpfung II by a more cosmogonic approach, creating an arresting expression of philosophical and religious syncretism.

Molzahn's fascinating complexities continue on the stylistic level. Combining the figurative with the abstract, the rhythmical with the geometric, Molzahn's style mirrors his commitment to many different influences: as well as Cubism and Futurism, Molzahn also owed a stylistic debt to the experiments of Heinrich Campendonk, Marc Chagall, and Franz Marc, all artists who exhibited at Herwarth Walden's Galerie Der Sturm in Berlin and whom he had met and befriended in the years preceding the war. It was in Walden's gallery that Molzahn first presented his series of Schöpfungsbilder in 1917, including the present work, which met with immediate critical success.