This striking recto/verso work shows the young Franz Radziwill confidently announcing himself as an emerging artist in the early years of the 1920s. Energetic and exuberant, the present work is a rare example of Radziwill’s early Expressionistic painting before his style evolved to accommodate the influence of the New Objectivity movement.

The work has exceptional provenance, having been part of the collection of the widely respected and highly influential art historian Wilhelm Niemeyer. A vocal champion of the German Expressionist movement, Niemeyer was particularly taken by the young Radziwill, writing that he possessed ‘the primordial predisposition of the true artist; for him colours are not only means for depiction, but are the essential deep source of life, of the things themselves’ (trans. from the German, cited in Gerhard Wietek, Franz Radziwill – Willhelm Niemeyer: Dokumente einer Freundschaft, Oldenburg, 1990, p. 23)

Certainly, this bold and expressive use of colour is on full display here, especially in the highly zoned Windmühle. While the foreground of the work is dominated by the sharp diagonal of the river bank, the upper portion of the canvas is arranged around a strong vertical axis, balanced by the two, heavily rendered windmills and exaggerated by the vivid orange and blue sections that they occupy. Characterised by the same heightened palette, Sitzende une Weisses Huhn exaggerates the sinuous, contorted line of Windmühle, creating a surreal scene as the walls of the room disappear into the landscape beyond, while the distorted figure in the foreground sits impassive as an icon.