Stillleben IV

Alexander Kanoldt reacted to the political tensions of the Weimar Republic (1918–33) by depicting an apparently timeless order in his paintings. His still lifes, which he began painting in 1923, direct a sober gaze onto a world in which objects such as rubber plants, vases, and crockery—trivial, everyday things—take center stage.

With his participation in the 1925 exhibition »New Objectivity« at the Kunsthalle Mannheim, Kanoldt became one of the leading representatives of the art movement of the same name. The cool tranquility which emanates from his pictures is based on a carefully considered pictorial composition. Their clear guiding of the viewer’s gaze and naturalistic depiction of the objects set them apart from the abstract tendencies of his Cubist and Expressionist contemporaries.

But Kanoldt’s still lifes also have a mysterious quality due to the anonymity of many of the objects, as if they have no owners. In their exaggerated “thinghood,” they appear to be more than mere objects, as if they harbor a subtle secret.