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Lot Essay
'For me Italy opened my eyes both to what I wanted to do and to what I could do. Nowhere is the difference between art and kitsch so self-evident as in Italy. There are many great paintings by great artists on view there...The art is old, but this old art is often newer than the new art...In Italy, I found my way' (Christian Schad, 'Mein Lebensweg', foreword to exh. cat. Christian Schad, Galerie Würthle, Vienna, 1927).
Die schöne Loge (The Theatre Box) is the very first of Christian Schad's paintings to be painted in the 'Magic Realist' style for which the artist is best known. Painted in Naples in 1920, it is the first of an outstanding group of Neapolitan paintings in which Schad sought to express the vitality and energy of the Mediterranean life he encountered there with the clarity and precision of the Old Masters.
Amongst the many Old Master paintings to impress Schad, it was Raphael's La Fornarina which he saw on a visit to Rome in 1920 that proved the most influential. As his son Nikolaus Schad has written of this work, it was 'the magical gaze, the simple clarity of forms, the transparency of colour in translucent veils and shimmering skin and the distinctly erotic aura of the painting', that moved Schad and provided him with a blueprint for the 'Magic Realism' of his subsequent paintings (N. Schad, writing in exh. cat. Christian Schad, New York, 2003, p. 40).
Die schöne Loge exhibits both the new neo-classicism of Schad's mature style and his concern with expressing the inherent vitality of the lifestyle that had overwhelmed both him and his friend and fellow former Dadaist Walter Serner when they arrived in Naples and which ultimately persuaded Schad to stay. In a move that anticipates the rough-edged bohemian atmosphere of his Berlin paintings, Schad depicts a theatre scene from the perspective of its multifarious and enthusiastic crowd. Nobody however, is paying any attention to the activity happening on the theatre stage, shown in the background, rather they are seemingly responding to something that has happened within the crowd itself. As with other Neapolitan paintings such as Café d'Italia for example, it is the colourful nature of the crowd that draws both the artist and his subject's attention - a world where, as Schad himself spoke of Naples, 'nothing was cut and dried, where things could still emerge out of the multifarious and twilight sides of life...Every day the strangest things happen, which might, depending on one's views, be taken as diabolical, magical, or fateful' (Christian Schad, Relative Realitäten, Errinerungen um Walter Serner, Augsburg, 1999).
Die schöne Loge (The Theatre Box) is the very first of Christian Schad's paintings to be painted in the 'Magic Realist' style for which the artist is best known. Painted in Naples in 1920, it is the first of an outstanding group of Neapolitan paintings in which Schad sought to express the vitality and energy of the Mediterranean life he encountered there with the clarity and precision of the Old Masters.
Amongst the many Old Master paintings to impress Schad, it was Raphael's La Fornarina which he saw on a visit to Rome in 1920 that proved the most influential. As his son Nikolaus Schad has written of this work, it was 'the magical gaze, the simple clarity of forms, the transparency of colour in translucent veils and shimmering skin and the distinctly erotic aura of the painting', that moved Schad and provided him with a blueprint for the 'Magic Realism' of his subsequent paintings (N. Schad, writing in exh. cat. Christian Schad, New York, 2003, p. 40).
Die schöne Loge exhibits both the new neo-classicism of Schad's mature style and his concern with expressing the inherent vitality of the lifestyle that had overwhelmed both him and his friend and fellow former Dadaist Walter Serner when they arrived in Naples and which ultimately persuaded Schad to stay. In a move that anticipates the rough-edged bohemian atmosphere of his Berlin paintings, Schad depicts a theatre scene from the perspective of its multifarious and enthusiastic crowd. Nobody however, is paying any attention to the activity happening on the theatre stage, shown in the background, rather they are seemingly responding to something that has happened within the crowd itself. As with other Neapolitan paintings such as Café d'Italia for example, it is the colourful nature of the crowd that draws both the artist and his subject's attention - a world where, as Schad himself spoke of Naples, 'nothing was cut and dried, where things could still emerge out of the multifarious and twilight sides of life...Every day the strangest things happen, which might, depending on one's views, be taken as diabolical, magical, or fateful' (Christian Schad, Relative Realitäten, Errinerungen um Walter Serner, Augsburg, 1999).