Eugen Schönebeck ”Porträt”. 1965

Oil on canvas. 71,3 × 61,4 cm (28 ⅛ × 24 ⅛ in.). Signed lower left: Schönebeck. Signed and titled with brush in white and dated with brush in green on the reverse: E. Schönebeck „Porträt“ 1965. Signed and dated in blue ballpoint ink on the stretcher: Schönebeck 1965. Catalogue raisonné: Funck G 39 (with differing dimensions). [3080] Framed, Oil on canvas. 71,3 × 61,4 cm (28 ⅛ × 24 ⅛ in.). Signed lower left: Schönebeck. Signed and titled with brush in white and dated with brush in green on the reverse: E. Schönebeck „Porträt“ 1965. Signed and dated in blue ballpoint ink on the stretcher: Schönebeck 1965. Catalogue raisonné: Funck G 39 (with differing dimensions). [3080] Framed, Private Collection, Berlin (acquired in the 1970s-years from the artist), Private Collection, Berlin (acquired in the 1970s-years from the artist), Eugen Schönebeck 1957–1967. Frankfurt a. M., Schirn Kunsthalle, 2011, ill. p. 38, Eugen Schönebeck’s painting „Porträt“ is constructed in a relief-like manner. Against a flatly conceived background incorporating ornamental elements, the sculpturally rendered, shadow-laden head of a young man emerges in striking relief. The contrast between foreground and background is further emphasised by the artist’s brushwork: while Schönebeck applied the paint to the background in thin, even layers, he built up the head on the canvas using several thicker, more impasto layers. Two distinctive forms, which meet the sitter’s chin and cheek, serve as connecting elements between the differing painterly and chromatic treatments of foreground and background. Only a few years before the present portrait was created, Eugen Schönebeck had increasingly distanced himself from the Informel influences that had shaped his early work and his collaboration with Georg Baselitz, turning instead towards figurative compositions. His depictions of tortured and mutilated bodies were followed by scenes of the Crucifixion, through which the cross motif – also found in the present work – entered his painting. For several years, it would remain a central element of Schönebeck’s visual vocabulary, functioning both as a source of visual disruption and as a symbol of suffering. A formal variation of this motif can be found, for example, in the painting „Der wahre Mensch“ (1964), which marked the beginning of a group of predominantly large-scale portraits to which the present work also belongs. As its title suggests, Schönebeck drew upon the socialist states’ postulate of the “New Man” in these portraits. Clearly defined contours and broad, flat applications of colour characterise his artistic reflections on this propagandistic ideal. Both formally and thematically, these works anticipate a series of portraits in which, from 1965 onwards, Schönebeck turned his attention to the heroes of the Eastern Bloc. His portraits of Lenin, Mao Zedong, Trotsky and others already rank among his final paintings. In 1967, Eugen Schönebeck largely abandoned oil painting. His oeuvre, both distinguished in quality and limited in scope, currently comprises just 52 paintings according to the catalogue raisonné. Like „Der wahre Mensch“, the present Portrait also draws inspiration from the murals created in the 1950s and 1960s by the Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros. A committed communist, Siqueiros fascinated Schönebeck not only for artistic reasons but also on political grounds. One of Siqueiros’s large-scale works depicting the Mexican Revolution provided the impetus for the present „Porträt“: from a crowd of striking miners, the artist isolated a protagonist who thrusts his left fist, holding a flag, towards the viewer in a strikingly abstracted form. Schönebeck, however, does not portray a flag-waving champion of political change. Instead, he presents a disillusioned hero who has lost both his dynamism and the support of the masses. Pay Matthis Karstens

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