GEORGES KARS

(1882-1945)

Das Gespräch (In der Loge)

Footnotes

The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Rea Michalová.

Provenance
Arnold Blome Collection, Bremen.
Kunsthandel Uwe Michael, Bremen (acquired from the above).
Private collection, Bremen (acquired from the above).

Exhibited
Munich, Galerie Neue Kunst – Hans Goltz, Georg Kars: Gemälde und Zeichnungen, 26 October - 15 November 1913, no. 44 (titled In der Loge).
Bremen, Kunsthandel Uwe Michael, 1979.

Georges Kars was born to a German Jewish family, near Prague, in the Czech Republic in 1882. In 1899, he left for Munich where he befriended Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Eugen von Kahler and Jules Pascin, also studying with Franz von Stuck. With them, Kars would discuss and debate about Impressionism which had been dominating artistic circles, but now appeared to have limited expressive possibilities. Indeed, Impressionism sought to represent the subject with a realism based on the study of light, whereas Kars and his circle sought a way to represent an inner subjectivity.

When Kars arrived in Paris in 1908, he moved to Montmartre, where he spent time with Marc Chagall, Suzanne Valadon, Maurice Utrillo, and Max Jacob. Around them, his work absorbed a Cubist influence but maintained an Expressionist sensibility. Gespräch (In der Loge) depicts a conversation between a man and a woman at the opera in evening dress, but the sharp angles and dramatic colour palette set a strange atmosphere of unease, reflected by the couple's pallid complexions. Their faces and bodies are distorted and exacerbated by diagonal lines that challenge the stability of the work, annihilate perspective, and create a dizzying sense of vertigo.

During World War II, after Germany occupied Paris, Georges Kars left for Lyon, and then to Switzerland. After receiving news of the deaths of relatives, he committed suicide in 1945. To this day, Georges Kars remains an important figure of the Montmartre Avant-Garde and of Czech modern artists.