Niklaus Stoecklin

Private Collection, Basel, Switzerland, by 1940

Sale: Artcurial, Beurret Bailly Widmer, 20 March 2019, lot 346

Total gallery cost: $12,000

Basel, Kunsthaus Basel, Niklaus Stoecklin, February 24-March 25, 1940, no. 144.

Hans Birkhäuser, Niklaus Stoecklin: Neundvierzig Wiedergaben von Gemälden und Zeichnungen, Basel, 1943, p. 11, 27, illustrated.

Niklaus Stoecklin was a Belgian painter and designer involved with the Basel group of artists known as Das Neuen Leben, The New Life. During the 1920s, the artist began painting unsettling figurative subjects and moody still lives, which were quite close to the German art mouvement dubbed Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) to identify it as a post-expressionist approach, presenting an unsentimental realism addressing contemporary culture. Stoecklin's exploration of still life themes found its fullest expression in his paintings of the late 1920s and into the 1930s in which diverse, even peculiar, groupings of mundane articles are invested with a haunting presence. He often chose to contrast humble objects of everyday use with flowers or unusual natural elements like sea creatures, insects, crystals, and precious stones.