Schöpfung

In 1915 Johannes Molzahn was called up for military duty. From his "Militärpass" we learn that he served as an infantryman on the German-Danish border. As we read in his later diary (1926), the artist was utterly shocked by the war - an experience which he tried to overcome through the catharsis of art. As he wrote in 1926: 'Zwei Jahre Grenzdienst an der dänischen Grenze; wärende dieser Zeit entstanden die ersten entscheidenden Bilder: Schöpfung, geshöpfe & Schicksale, Reiter im Chaos'. The Schöpfung series (see lot 124), a major intellectual project in which he expressed his pantheistic vision of the universe, is one of the masterpieces created in the traumatic years at the front. The present watercolour relates closely to the Schöpfung oils, both thematically and formally. The striking chromatic changes that one witnesses in the evolution from the oils to the works on paper epitomise his dramatic exposure to the insanity of the conflict. The artist's participation in the battle of Riga was a crucial turning point in his perception of reality: the formal order which still controlled the oil version disappeared in the watercolour, which was instead dominated by a futuristic game of apparently unrelated shapes and volumes. The blues and yellows of the previous composition have given way to an explosion of red - a vivid memento of blood on the battlefield, which stupefied and froze the artist's "mind's eye".