Ernst Weiers 1909 Oespel – 1978 Bernried "Snow-Covered Bush" Oil and white gouache on panel, framed Monogrammed and dated lower left (1963), and signed and dated verso Size: 20.5 x 14.5 cm (viewing area) or 34 x 27 cm (with frame) Provenance: formerly in the collection of Viktor Langen (March 22, 1909, Cologne – 1990). Dr. h.c. Viktor Langen was an entrepreneur, manufacturer, and, from 1968, President of the Düsseldorf Chamber of Industry and Commerce. Ernst Weiers was a friend of Viktor Langen, and it is likely that the collector received or acquired this work directly from the artist. ____________________________ Ernst Weiers Painter, draftsman, printmaker. “The painter Ernst Weiers senses the uncanny nature of the earth. Its darkness is a dangerously alluring secret to him. Like a woodsman, one imagines him in the thicket, listening with hunter-like delight to its endless weaving. [\.] His significance, it seems to me, lies in the fact that, based on an instinctive connection to nature in the vein of Marc, he uses the means of abstraction to develop a pictorial form in which the representational—not as object-bound, but rather through its inherent poetic and formal figuration—asserts its right” (Hans Konrad Röthel). 1929–33 Studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy (under Heinrich Campendonk). He was later a master student of Paul Klee. Friendship with Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. 1933–35 in Switzerland, until he was expelled to Germany. During the Third Reich, he withdrew from public life and initially lived in Berlin, later in Bernried. 1949 Returned to Bernried and worked there from then on. Close contact with the Faber-Castell family. Awards: 1954 Böttcherstraße Art Prize, Bremen 1958 Prize at the International Triennial for Original Colored Prints, Grenchen, Switzerland Collections: Museum Folkwang, Essen Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach Bavarian State Painting Collection, Munich Lenbachhaus, Munich Artothek Oldenburg Märkisches Museum, Witten Faber-Castell Collection