The weaver and ceramicist Holcha Krake is to a great extent one of the “forgotten women” that we want to shed light on with this auction. She is trained as a weaver in Copenhagen and Berlin, and in her 20s she travels to Dresden, Paris, Belgium and Italy as well as Tunis, where she studies ceramics.

In her art, she acknowledges a deep inspiration from the older, traditional art of weaving as well as Nordic, European and Egyptian ancestry. During a stay in Norway 1935–37, Krake also begins to work with watercolour and oil, especially with floral motifs, but also - as here - strongly coloured landscapes.

Holcha Krake's younger sister Erna marries the German sculptor Christoph Voll, and it is in the company of them that she meets the American painter William Henry Johnson in the artists' colony in Cagnes-sur-Mer in 1929. In 1930, the couple marries and settles in Kerteminde, close to Krake's childhood home. Due to the rise of Nazism, the racially mixed couple leaves Denmark in October 1938 to settle in the USA, where Krake dies of cancer in January 1944.

We have not previously seen works by Holcha Krake - however, William Henry Johnson's paintings have often achieved high hammer prices at auction in Denmark and abroad - and therefore we are delighted to be able to offer this fine small drawing by an extremely rare artist at auction.

More information about the artist: https://issuu.com/josephinerydeng/docs/willie-and-holcha-in-north-africa-1932?fr=xKAE9_zU1NQ