ERWIN STOLZ (Kyselka 1896 - 1987 Vienna), At the Hammam, 1944

ERWIN STOLZ*
(Kyselka 1896 - 1987 Vienna)
At the Hammam, 1944
gouache/paper, 28 x 21 cm
signed E.Stolz and dated 44
Provenance: estate of the artist, private property Vienna

ESTIMATE °€ 1.000 - 2.000
START € 1.000

Austrian painter and graphic artist of the 20th century. Came to painting after World War I as a self-taught sign painter and industrial graphic artist. Maintained contacts with Gustav Kurt Beck, Erich Mallina, George Kenner, Alexander Rothaug and the artists of the Hagenbund. He was friends with Josef Matthiaus Hauser from the circle of Arnold Schönberg. Stylistically to be assigned to Art Nouveau and Symbolism, interest in mysticism, mythology and theosophy. Clear influences of Max Klinger and Gustav Klimt. Created mystical scenes and fairy-tale motifs, depictions of man and nature in harmony. Also impressions of travels to distant lands and motifs from the Arabian Nights such as the female nudes in the oriental steam bath dressed only in the hamam cloth.

With this small-format painting, Erwin Stolz takes us into a hammam, a public bathing facility that forms an important part of oriental bathing and body culture in the former Ottoman world and throughout the Arab world. In Islam there has always been a close connection between cleanliness and religion. The same applies to ritual ablutions: According to Mohammed, not the "smallest spot on the body" must remain dry so that the dirt and with it the sins can drain away. In the center of the hammam there is usually a hot, marble room with the "göbek taşı", the "navel stone", in the middle. In the past, you walked through thick clouds of steam because the room was heated underground with wood: The resulting hot floor and hot water made Helmuth von Moltke, who was traveling to Turkey, afraid in 1836 that he would get out again boiled. Stolz, who only came to become a painter via detours, is less concerned with the special exotic oriental charm of this ambience than with the possibility of combining nudes and interiors with ornamental and decorative means. In the two female nudes, the artist therefore refrains from depicting an oriental woman, as is customary in the genre: the sitters in their bathing robes are Europeans, who do not have to hide their modesty out of religious considerations or moral concerns. In the foreground on the right, a tall, slender female figure is emerging from the bath, only sparsely wrapped in a "peştemal", the hammam sheet. In the background, a half-naked female figure has sat down on a stool and is looking thoughtfully backwards. The scene has a classic solemnity that has nothing in common with the sultry atmosphere of such oriental baths. Rather, Stolz plays with the decorative and ornamental design options. This is offered to him, for example, in the background design with the oriental urban landscape bathed in blazing sunlight with its steeply piled houses. He also pays great attention to the material differentiation of the robes and floors. With this, Stolz seems to have recalled his artistic beginnings as well as his stylistic roots in the Art Nouveau environment.

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