Elegant lady getting into an Opel car Joseph Maria Olbrich

Joseph Maria Olbrich was, in his day, what we would today call a designer. In a manner characteristic of Viennese art around 1900, he advocated an expanded concept of art that dissolved the boundaries between genres. Architecture, arts and crafts, and everyday objects were to be united into a coherent aesthetic concept. Olbrich’s work thus exemplifies the idea of the ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’, in which the various arts are united. Joseph Maria Olbrich’s collaboration with the Opel family in Rüsselsheim began in 1906. It represents an early fusion of art, industrial production and the design of modern everyday life. In addition to the so-called ‘Opel Workers’ House’, the collaboration also included a conceptual design for an Opel car. The designs, created around 1906, are among the remarkable early examples of a renowned architect and artist who conceived the exterior form of a car as a design task in its own right, thereby combining art with industrial mass production. In contrast to the well-known design concept, the car in this drawing appears less as an elegant status symbol and more as the protagonist of an everyday scene. The meticulously executed drawing links the technical achievement of the car with the fashionable and social milieu of its time. It is precisely this combination of function, form and atmosphere that gives the sheet its special appeal. The depiction conveys a sense of the dawn of the modern era, in which the car became a symbol of mobility and technical progress. In this drawing, therefore, a historical record and an artistically executed drawing come together in a unique way. Olbrich’s collaboration with Opel came to an end as early as 1908 with the artist’s untimely death from cancer. The work is thus also of interest as a testament to Olbrich’s broad understanding of design. | 1867 Troppau - Düsseldorf 1908 | 19. Jahrhundert | Arbeiten auf Papier | Nummer: 26x1756 | Provenance: Privatsammlung, Rheinland.

Estimation:€15,000

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