Abstract Watercolor Collage Painting Signed Hans Hermann Steffens Dated 1977

Watercolor on cut-out paper 12.5 cm x 10 cm preserved under glass and sold with its old frame 25 cm x 23 cm signed and dated lower right Hans Hermann Steffens 1977. Good condition. Sold with invoice-certificate. In this collage from the 70s, Hans Hermann Steffens mixes fragments, textures and transparencies with the restraint of a visual poet. Each piece seems placed like a musical note, in a subtle balance between German rigor and Provençal sensuality. The paper becomes light, the cut-out breathes: it is a silent, but vibrant work, witness to an art that prefers nuance to brilliance, accuracy to effect. Born in Altona, near Hamburg, Hans Hermann Steffens trained at the Kunstakademie in Königsberg, before joining the post-war German art scene. Very early on, he established himself as a discreet but deeply sensitive painter, seeking in color and material a balance between rigor and emotion. After 1950, he divided his time between Hamburg and Provence, where the southern light transformed his palette and freed his gesture. A member of the Deutscher Künstlerbund and the Freie Akademie der Künste, he developed an intimate body of work, often small in format, where painting, drawing, collage and visual poetry intersect. Winner of the Edwin Scharff Prize in 1973, Steffens left a rare and delicate body of work, at the crossroads of constructivism and Mediterranean lyricism.