Edgar Fernhout (1912-1974)

Private Collection, Naarden
 

Amsterdam, Kunstzaal van Lier, Edgar Fernhout, 1932-33, illustrated on the invitation
The Hague, Kunstzalen d' Audretsch, Edgar Fernhout, 1934

"...From 1930-1932, Edgar Fernhout lives in Paris among the international avantgarde and becomes especially absorbed in the work of Piet Mondrian. Edgar Fernhout's realism is part of the 'New Objectivity', which places emphasis on the functional aspects of painting, such as the method and the technique. He follows the developments in film and photography, in those days the media in which countless formal innovations occur due to recording and montage techniques....(cf.lit.:John Steen, Fernhout, Amsterdam 1990, pp.93-94).

In Stilleven peren'....the objects are put in a geometrically ordered arrangement and depicted from a frontal point of view. Inspired by Mondrian, Fernhout looks for a similar equilibrium in the square painting, which shows an extreme simplification of visual elements and which is limited to shades of grey and white with a single yellow accent'....(cf.lit.: Aloys van den Berk and Jozien Moerbeek , Fernhout, Amsterdam 1990, pp.26-27).

The exhibition organized by the renowed Kunstzaal van Lier in Amsterdam at the end of 1932 must have been an enormous incentive for Edgar Fernhout, who by this event enters into the group of Wim Schuhmacher, Raoul Hynckes and Charley Toorop. At this occasion he showed seven paintings: three portraits and four still lifes and among these the present work. Stilleven peren. The image of the painting was used as the front cover illustration of the invitation to the exhibition.