Property from the Estate of Louis Christian Hess

LOUIS CHRISTIAN HESS (AUSTRIAN 1895-1944)
Boys on the beach, 1929 (recto); Self-portrait studies, Messina, 1936 (verso)
signed L.C.Hess (lower right)
watercolour, pastel and pencil, unframed
37 x 53.5 cm (14 1/2 x 21 in)

Louis Christian Hess (1895-1944) was strongly influenced by German Expressionism and the Neue Sachlichkeit. He became friends with Max Beckmann and Karl Hofer and was a leading voice in the Juryfreie in Munich.

His formative years were overshadowed by a succession of family bereavements and the horrors of the First World War. Between the ages of 10 and 22, he lost his father and two of his three sisters to tuberculosis, and learnt of the death of his mother whilst on the German front line, where he fought in the battles of Verdun, the Somme and Aisne. By the end of the War he had one remaining sibling, his sister Emma, to whom he remained close. But his war time experiences combined with unfolding family tragedies scarred him psychologically, and left him with a nervous disposition for the rest of his life.

Munich in the 1920s was home to the artists most closely associated with Neue Sachlichkeit (The New Objectivity) – amongst them Otto Dix, George Scholz, Christian Schad and Max Beckmann. Although Hess was not formally associated with the movement, he became friends with Beckmann in the late 1920s, and the influence of the style can clearly be seen in his work.

In 1925 Hess travelled to Sicily to visit his sister Emma in Messina. He wrote to his friends in Germany that he had found paradise, and so inspired, in 1926 he produced a series of 60 vibrant Sicilian etchings, and returned repeatedly to the island thereafter settling there from 1933-1938.