Abstract gouache work on artist's board in rectangular format. In shades of green, red and yellow, with impasto application of paint and visible ductus. The work is signed Jos. Steiner lower right and dated (19)68. Framed behind glass with passepartout, in modern, gold-painted and profiled frame. Image dimensions: 49 x 64 cm. Provenance: Private estate, Berlin. As an artist, Josef Steiner (1899 Munich - 1977 ibid.) experienced Germany in all its facets. As a talented young student at the Munich trade school, he was drafted into the First World War at the age of 19. From 1920, he lived with his wife Gertrud Schaefer (1882-1969) in Berlin and experienced the Golden Twenties there. From then on, the capital and the leading Expressionist movement left their mark on him and artistic success did not fail to follow. The name Josef Steiner was mentioned in Berlin exhibitions and reviews at the same time as names such as Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Max Pechstein and many other well-known greats. He was branded a "degenerate artist" after Hitler's rise to power, particularly because of his expressionist nudes. He began to document his work photographically at an early stage, as the National Socialist regime's crackdown proved to be true and many of his large-format works are now lost. As a critic of the regime, he was persecuted and suffered a difficult period between 1936 and 1939, with cruel political imprisonment for eight months in 1937. Impoverished and in poor health, Steiner was finally banned from working in 1939 and subsequently moved back to Munich. After soon enlisting as a soldier in the Second World War and subsequently being wounded, he was discharged from the Wehrmacht in 1944. To help himself out of a hopeless situation, he created the infamous "Kinderköpfchen", which he sent as a portrait of Holde Goebbels to the Reich Propaganda Minister Goebbels. This actually had a benevolent effect, without him having to ingratiate himself with the regime through Nazi motifs and "blood and soil painting". He was thus able to resume his work as an artist in 1943 and devoted himself to depictions of nature as a graphic artist. In his private life, however, he continued to live it up in nude prints. From the 1960s and after a good 20 years of impoverishment, things began to look up again for Steiner and his success slowly returned. Mainly dedicated to Expressionism, he created a comprehensive oeuvre even after the war and was honored by exhibitions, especially in the "Haus der Kunst", Munich. Illustrated in: Rainer Haaff: Josef Steiner - Life and Graphic Work. Leopoldshafen 2019, p.150, ill. 396.

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