Lou Loeber (1894-1983) - Geranium / De Stijl

Lou Loeber: Geranium — from La Lune en Rodage III (1928 / 1977)

A silkscreen print on paper, 30 × 30 cm, published by Edition Panderma, Basel. The image dates from 1928 and was issued as a print in 1977 as part of the third volume of La Lune en Rodage. From an edition of 230; this is an unnumbered copy (65 hors-commerce copies were likewise unnumbered). Signed and dated, titled "Geranium" in pencil. In good condition, mounted on grey 32 × 32 cm cardboard.

This sheet belongs to one of the most remarkable publishing projects of the post-war avant-garde. La Lune en Rodage was a portable collection of modern and contemporary art conceived and published by the collector and editor Carl Laszlo, issued in three volumes in 1960, 1965 and 1977 and containing in total some 180 works that together trace the artistic avant-garde from the 1950s to the 1970s. Laszlo gathered contributions from leading artists of the period — among them Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni, Andy Warhol, Enrico Castellani and Michelangelo Pistoletto — who frequently contributed pieces marking a turning point in their work. Castellani's contribution, for example, is his first documented graphic work, and Manzoni's Achrome multiple is the only one the artist produced. To hold a sheet from this series is to hold a page from a genuine anthology of twentieth-century art.
Louise Marie Loeber, known as Lou Loeber, was an Amsterdam-born Dutch artist — painter, glass painter, illustrator and etcher — who worked largely in a non-figurative, abstract-geometric and abstract-figurative idiom. She studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam from 1915 to 1918, leaving early because she found it too conservative. In 1919 she met the painter Toon Verhoef, who introduced her to Socialism, De Stijl, Cubism and modernism; inspired by Albert Gleizes, Le Corbusier and Mondrian, her work became more sober and pared down. She went on to explore the link between modern art and Socialism, deciding to multiply her works and keep her prices low. In 1931 she married the artist Dirk Koning, like her a pacifist, progressive, vegan and socialist. She favoured industrial and technological subjects, which she translated into lines and shapes; while she considered fully abstract art elitist and retained references to reality in her earlier work, after the war she moderated her socialist views and worked mostly non-figuratively.

Provenance:
Edition Panderma, Carl Laszlo, Basel
Galerie von Bartha, Basel
Private collection, Basel
Year: 1928 (image) / 1977 (published)
Technique: Silkscreen print on paper
Edition: From an edition of 230 — this an unnumbered copy (65 hors-commerce also unnumbered)
Signature: Signed, dated and titled "Geranium" in pencil
Dimensions: 30 × 30 cm
Condition: Good, mounted on grey 32 × 32 cm cardboard
Provenance: Edition Panderma / Carl Laszlo, Basel — Galerie von Bartha, Basel — Private collection, Basel