Rudolf Nehmer (1912-1983), The Man Of The Fields And Death, Circa 1948

Rudolf Nehmer (1912 Bobersberg - 1983 Dresden), The Fieldman and Death, around 1948. Woodcut on yellowish wove paper, 16.8 cm x 15.8 cm (depiction), 42 cm x 30 cm (sheet size), signed “Rud.[olf] Nehmer” in pencil lower right.

- The wide sheet margin somewhat wavy, minimally light-stained, the image in excellent, colorful condition.

- Sowing and Harvest -

In this painting Rudolf Nehmer reflects on the immediate catastrophic past. He refers to the medieval story "The Farmer from Bohemia" by Johannes von Tepl, but instead of a dialogue with Death, Death sits behind the farmer and sharpens his scythe while the farmer tills the field. The result is not a blooming landscape, but a dead landscape of Death - an inverted sacred grove from which Death will bring home his harvest.

About the artist

Rudolf Nehmer studied from 1932 to 1934 in Dresden at the private art academy founded by Ernst Oskar Simonson-Castelli under Woldemar Winkler and, after a brief interlude at the art academy, was a student in Willy Kriegel's studio until 1936. After his first one-man show in 1935 at the Kühl Art Exhibition in Dresden, which was progressive until the Nazi era, Nehmer was represented at the major German art exhibitions in the following years. In 1938 he stayed in Worpswede. From 1941 he was a soldier on the Western Front and in Denmark, returning to Dresden from British captivity in 1945. After the war, he had his first solo exhibition in 1945. Nehmer was a co-founder of the artists' association 'Das Ufer - Gruppe 1947' and in 1951 a founding member of the artists' cooperative 'Kunst und Zeit'. He had numerous solo and group exhibitions in the GDR, culminating in a retrospective at the Galerie Neuer Meister on the occasion of his 60th birthday.