Lot 81: Karl Weschke (German, 1925-2005) Penwith Farm 47.5 x 71.5 cm. (18 3/4 x 28 1/4 in.)

Penwith Farm
signed and dated 'Weschke 1956' (lower right edge), further signed 'K. Weschke' (on the backboard)
monotype and oil on paper
47.5 x 71.5 cm. (18 3/4 x 28 1/4 in.)

Provenance:
with Porthmeor Gallery, St Ives

Penwith Farm dates from the year after Weschke’s move to Cornwall and expresses several motifs that were to become a staple of his visual language. Having suffered a most impoverished and emotionally turbulent childhood in Germany, Weschke found some solace in the brooding, mythical landscape of Cornwall. Though he was already painting in the abstract idiom by the time he moved to Cornwall, the earthy tones that reveal themselves in Penwith Farm were a direct response to his surroundings. The landscape-based abstraction certainly appears to have been influenced by his knowledge of the work of his friend Bryan Wynter, who suggested his move to Cornwall, and fellow Cornish artist Peter Lanyon. However Weschke’s work had a slightly more expressive treatment, which can be discerned in this early abstract. Despite being closely associated with the St Ives School, Weschke remained somewhat aloof from his artistic colleagues, derisively labelling St Ives ‘Bloomsbury on Sea’ and preferring the company of writers such as John Le Carre. His German heritage and stong accent may have contributed to his outsider status in England: throughout his life his work expressed, in both his abstract and figurative paintings, the lonliness and solitude of man.


Works by Weschke are rare at auction. In June 2007, Bonhams achieved the auction record for Weschke with 'Landscape', painted in 1957 which realised £18,000.