Exhibited: “Francisca Clausen - Retrospektiv Udstilling”, Kunstforeningen, Copenhagen, January-February 1964. Provenance: Private collection, Denmark. Acquired at the above mentioned exhibition by the current owner's father.

Franciska Clausen belongs to an exclusive circle of Danish artists whose star shines a little more brightly. Already at a very young age, she left Denmark in favour of the more radical and advanced art movements abroad. For more than 15 years, she alternated between living in Berlin and Paris, where she took classes. At the same time, she left a weighty and independent legacy, which inspired several of the great Modernist masters. Among other things, she was a co-founder of the “Cercles et carré” group, which was formed in 1929 and featured prominent members such as Wassily Kandinsky, Le Corbusier, Kurt Schwitters, Piet Mondrian and the artist couple Delaunay. Clausen achieved great international recognition during her own lifetime, while her fame here in Denmark was unjustly delayed.

Today, she can be regarded as one of Denmark’s most significant avant-garde artists with her clear and powerful idiom, characterized by the Constructivists' belief in harmony and freedom, and Franciska Clausen is now as relevant as ever before. Right now, her work can be experienced at the GL Strand modern art institution in Copenhagen, so perhaps posterity has recognized what contemporary times already knew – as described here with the words of her friend the art historian Oscar Reutersvärd:

“Her (Franciska Clausen) progressive spirit also manifested itself through other expressions. She dared what no one else had the courage to and attacked none other than Mondrian directly! Among her many 'reform efforts' of the orthogonal neoplastic system was to use the circle again. For a long time, she also experimented with 'inverting' the great Dutchman's method of capturing the immaterial colours. But at the time she belonged among the few, who had an in-depth understanding of the Mondrianian intentions. Therefore, she was in her full right to experiment with this mysterious colour practice.

It was said in the artist circles of Paris that Franciska Clausen's twisted contour lines of the circles had an interesting consequence. When she presented her innovation at the above-mentioned exhibition (“Cercle et carré”) at Galerie 23 on Rue la Boëtie, Picasso, who lived in the same house, repeatedly came down to the exhibition and stood for a long time considering her “neoplastic circles”. It has later been claimed that soon after the great cubist incorporated these spectacular circles in his still-life compositions, where he used them as abstract fruits in bowls." (“Franciska Clausen was the boldest of us all” p. 42 in ”Mødested Paris” (Meeting Place: Paris), Randers Museum of Art, 1984)

The work we offer here for sale is a rarity on the market and can be regarded as having sprung from the same artistic idea as one of her absolute central works, the oil painting “Cercle et carré” from 1929.