signed twice and dated ‘Mai 1970 131’ verso- assemblage (painted plexiglass and aluminium on painted wood relief) panel 120×80.5 cm in original baguette of the artist
Provenance and literature
Provenance: Collection Ralph Lederman, Paris (<1978)
Private Collection, Paris (< 2014)
Galerie de Seine, Paris (Thessa Herold)
Literature: Alain Clairet, Catalogue Raisonné de l'oeuvre en relief, no.218, p.195
Exhibited: Bourges (Fr),Maison de la Culture, Domela, March-June 1974
About the artist
He was the youngest son of politician Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis and his fourth wife, Johanna Egberta Godthelp, and lived in Hilversum from 1900 to 1918. Domela was self-taught and initially studied biology. From 1919 to 1923, he lived in Ascona, Switzerland, where he developed a constructivist-abstract style in 1922. In 1923, he moved to Berlin. That same year, he exhibited at the November Group’s exhibition there.
In 1925, he became a member of De Stijl and thus became close friends with Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian. In the second half of the 1920s, he worked in a style closely related to that of Mondrian. He began to focus on the development of reliefs: three-dimensional paintings in which the diagonal would play an important role. He also experimented with photomontages and applied them in advertising. Around 1930, he created striking reliefs made of Plexiglas and metal, though always with oil painting as his starting point. In 1933, he settled permanently in Paris. After World War II, his reliefs in particular became the defining feature of his oeuvre. In 1960, the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag acquired works by him and organized a retrospective. Twenty years later, a second major retrospective of Domela’s work was held there.