Lot 149: Apocalypse 152.7 x 111.8 cm. (60 1/4 x 44 in.)

Apocalypse signed twice, inscribed, and dated 'KM Weschke 1957/APOCALYPSE/£100/KM Weschke'(verso) oil on board 152.7 x 111.8 cm. (60 1/4 x 44 in.)

152.7 x 111.8 cm

Jeremy Lewison, Karl Weschke, Portrait of an Artist, Tate Publishing, St Ives, 1998, p.31 (ill.b&w)

The Artist's Estate

The present work is particularly significant within the formation of Weschke's artistic development. In early 1958 Weschke had taken this oil to show Helen Lessore at her Beaux Arts Gallery and had hoped that his kinship with the artists Peter Kinley, Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff would impress her but was left disappointed. Leaving the gallery he bumped into the artist Denis Bowen in Bond Street and showed Bowen the painting. Bowen immediately offered Weschke what was to be his first solo show, at the New Vision Gallery, later that year. Jeremy Lewisonnotes that 'Weschke adopted the fracture of de Staël's painting in the Apocalypse 1957-8, building up rich impasto but resisting the temptation to expand the range of his palette. In terms of composition, this striking painting of a horse and rider, a warrior of the Thirty Years War, pays homage to Marino Marini whose work Weschke had admired in the Tate Gallery, but in its fusion of landscape with myth and history the Apocalypse had something more in common with the painting of Peter Lanyon – for example St Just 1952-3' (Jeremy Lewison, Karl Weschke, Portrait of an Artist, Tate Publishing, St Ives, 1998, p.30-31).